


An Education

by Hotpie



Series: Hotpie Canon Universe [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Brienne Realises How Hot She Is, Drabble Collection, Drabble Sequence, Eventual Smut, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Happy Ending, Humor, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Season/Series 06 AU, Romance, Season/Series 06 Spoilers, Slow Burn, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 03:42:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 42,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7205855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hotpie/pseuds/Hotpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You think they're fucking? Why not? I'd fuck her. You'd fuck her, wouldn't you? Well, he'd fuck her, that's for sure."</p><p>Series of connected, canon-based drabbles that eventually turns into Brienne/everyone once she realises how glorious she actually is. </p><p>Because Bronn ships that.</p><p>(AU as of S7)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Brienne/Tormund I

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of a build-up. Patience.
> 
> Un-beta'd. Forgive my eager fingers.

"And that wildling fellow with the beard--"

Brienne did not know Lady Sansa nearly as well as she would have liked, and had little patience for smiles or laughter, but knew a smirk when she saw one. The girl--her lady and pledged charge--was trying not to laugh at her.

"His name is Tormund," Sansa said. "And I think he quite likes you."

"But--" Brienne took a step back, her armour clanking as she dropped her arms back against her plate. She showed just as much teeth in her grimace as Sansa did in her smile. "A wildling."

"Jon says they respect women, and that the spearwives are just as fearsome as the men in battle."

"That's all well and good, but--"

"Jon also says that when a wildling man wants a woman, he'll steal her from her home and take her as wife, though she's expected to fight every step of the way."

"I will not be stolen," Brienne replied, her jaw tightening.

"I believe you," Sansa said, going back to her sewing, the shadow hiding her smile. "But I also believe he'd love to try."


	2. Brienne/Renly I

"I've never kissed a girl."

They were by the Scarlet Falls, where the iron-rock ran red with rust beneath the blue-white waters. Brienne wore nothing but her shift, and Renly his breeches, and their legs--his ropey with lean muscle, and goosepimpled with black hair, hers pale and strong and longer than his--hung over the sides, dangling above the roaring pool far below.

Brienne shifted next to him, her thumb nudging against his palm for a second before, face red, she pulled her hand away.

"Have you kissed a boy?" Renly asked her.

Brienne, so easy in their friendship for so long, suddenly couldn't find the words to answer.

"I'm not sure I'd like it," she finally replied.

"You don't?" He sounded surprised. "You wouldn't like someone strong? Tall and flat-chested, quick with a sword, with a jaw that could--"

"You're describing me, Lord Renly."

He took a quick gasp of air, as though he meant to proclaim that nonsense, then second-guessed himself.

"There is nothing wrong with the way you look."

"Thank you," Brienne replied quietly.

"There is no need to thank me, either," Renly replied. His thoughts seemed to wander to their previous musings, and his words followed. "You really don't think you'd like it?"

"I don't know," Brienne replied, her tongue digging almost painfully into the back of her front teeth. "I have not had the best experience with men."

"What am I, then?" Renly said. He flung his arms wide, pointing at his widening shoulders, his broadening chest. 

"My friend," Brienne replied, hoping that didn't sound like a question.

"Yes," Renly agreed. "And a man, at that. And you're a woman, nearly."

"I thought--"

"I mean by age," Renly corrected himself, before she could remind him of his earlier compliments. "Not by stature."

He paused for a moment and dropped his hands into his lap, winding around his finger a lace of his breeches.

"Perhaps we should kiss each other," he said.

Brienne's heart felt as though it would catapult her over the rockface, send her spiraling into the pool below, among the white and red churning waters.

Then she started--there were fingers beneath her chin, strong ones. The crook of the index finger, calloused and rough. If she were shorter, he might tilt her face up to his, like she'd seen in rare moments of affection elsewhere on the island, in the marketplace or streets--but she was not shorter, so the finger only served as something torturous, some warm reminder that Renly had just called her a woman. _Nearly._

"Well?" he asked. 

He did not smile at her, so she did not smile back.

Neither of them moved an inch.

The hand dropped. Once more, only air touched Brienne of Tarth's skin.

"I've an idea," Renly said, the laces of his breeches striping his fingers red once more. "Let's wait." Teeth glimmered in a smile. "I want to do it in front of court, where everyone can see."


	3. Brienne/Pod I

Brienne of Tarth was usually very good at listening to her lady, but as of late, nearly every word exchanged in private made her want to fly away, out of her rooms, into the muddy square of Castle Black...into the swirling of snow and rain, where no one could see through the damp to find her blushing bright enough to light a beacon.

Instead, as always, she could do nothing but stand there in the draughty room, hoping to the Seven that the girl would have mercy and dismiss her.

After what had happened in Winterfell, she couldn't blame Sansa for wanting some camaraderie, and some laughter as she recovered from what had been wrought on her inside the walls of her childhood home. However, she rather wished that the confiding laughter and the jibes and the knowing, surprised glances when she and Sansa were alone hadn't found a new inspiration:

Pod.

Well, not exactly Pod himself, but Pod's….

 _I will not think the word,_ Brienne thought, unable to keep herself from staring as Podrick Payne adjusted the saddle for her horse, preparing for their ride to Riverrun the following day. Testing the straps, repairing a bent buckle, taking advantage of brief, rare sunshine with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, surprisingly sinewy muscle roping up his forearms as he worked.

Brienne didn't know why that muscle was surprising, considering they had been unwillingly intimate companions for months. She had seen much more of him than his forearms in the uncomfortable times that had passed, though she had always, _always_ looked away.

"Tyrion talked," Sansa had told her, in those many private moments when Brienne had set her teeth and tried to shut the niggling words out. "About what happened in the brothel. With Pod." Sansa's expression darkened. "He didn't talk to me, of course--I only overheard him. What happened with the whores. It must have felt…" She blushed prettily, and Brienne shifted uncomfortably on her feet, sweating in her armor. "Good. For them. I wouldn't mind knowing what that feels like."

"My lady?" Brienne had said, wondering if there was intent behind Sansa's words, or if she had simply forgotten Brienne was still standing there.

"Just curious," Sansa said. "That's all."

Brienne said the words before she thought them. "Did you want me to fetch him for you, my lady?"

Sansa looked startled, then broke out into another rare bout of laughter that made Brienne feel both relieved and vastly self-conscious.

"No," Sansa said, "but thank you for thinking of my needs. I think I am content to not touch a man for a good while longer. But perhaps you--"

Brienne had bowed and left the room, pretending that Sansa had dismissed her.

Pod had her saddle over a railing, now, and was bent over it, taking to the leather with a damp cloth, his usually blank face tense with concentration. Brienne couldn't help but think if he made that face while he saw to the fabled whores, and exactly which techniques--what ripostes, what feints, what swift, deep thrusts of the sword--had brought the girls such pleasure. He must ride a girl better than he rode a horse, then. And wielded his cock better than he wielded a blade.

"Is that adequate, m'lady?"

He was looking at her, that same soft expression of a soft mind on his soft face, the polishing cloth wrung tight in his stained fingers.

Brienne felt herself blush blood-red.

"No," Brienne told him, harsher than she intended, and before he could say another word, hurried off--her plate clanking and her fingers clenched tight in her gloves--to their room.


	4. Brienne/Tormund II

Brienne had rather taken to baths. She was rarely afforded the opportunity, these days, instead often finding herself relegated to frigid streams, too far from a hot spring, much too far from the warm waters on the island she had once called home.

They were three days' ride south of the Wall, another half-day away from parting with Jon Snow's forces, and everyone stank. Everyone had been stinking for a while, Brienne knew, long before they left Castle Black, but it had become more pungent the further south they went and the minutely warmer it grew. Though it seemed that she was the only one to notice it. Even Sansa, beautiful but bedraggled, hard blue eyes starting to droop with tiredness while her forehead shined, waved away Brienne's offers to accompany her to the nearby spring so that she might wash. Finally, with the assurance that the girl was safe beneath Snow's roof for the evening, Brienne abandoned Pod's sad attempts to assemble their tent and shed her armor, refastened Oathkeeper around her hips, and began her tense walk away from camp and to the promised spring, already feeling naked buried beneath fur rather than metal.

It felt lonely out there as she walked away from camp, in the blur of snow, summer's dead leaves crunching beneath her feet. The cold pricked at her skin as she threw off her furs and, with a sharp intake of breath, undid her tunic and breeches. She stood nearer the spring before she pulled off her boots, so her feet had ground to land on that wouldn't send up a frozen shock like a mace strike to the back of her skull.

The water was a kiss, not as hot as the bath she'd shared with Jaime Lannister (it was odd to look back at those strange minutes and think the same things, feel the same emotions, that she did then: the disgust giving way to disbelief, to pity, then to panic as the heat and blood loss overtook him, then finally to the feel of his hot skin as he fainted in her arms).  It was embarrassing how he had become part of her bathing ritual now. The memory morphing, changing into something else: Jaime across the bath from her, clean shaven and in full control of his senses, what she imagined as a sense of longing lending a warm glow to his eyes….

"Fuck, hot as whore's rash, isn't it?"

Brienne jerked back, reaching for her sword at her hip, then behind her to where she'd left it on the water's edge. Her fingers found the Lannister lion before she was able to see who had waded knee-deep into the pool across from her, almost a sword-swing away.

The wildling fellow. The one with the beard.

 _His name is Tormund_ , Sansa had said.

"Why are you here?" Brienne asked, loud and clear and with her sword still half-drawn from its sheath.

Steam cleared around him, parting the way. He was naked. He was also--Brienne noticed, before she determinedly looked away, wishing that like other girls, she had been spared the near-constant company of men, and certain indelicate types of knowledge--erect. His cock cut an impressive figure, rising from the surface of the water as he sunk in, not disappearing until the cut of his pale hipbones had disappeared as well.

Brienne kept one hand on Oathkeeper, and pressed the other arm against her breasts.

He was looking at her. The wilding… _Tormund…_ was looking at her with that insipidly bright smile flashing from beneath that thick red beard ( _as red as his…never mind)_ , like she was the sun setting over the Sapphire Isle.

"Why are you here?" Brienne said, losing confidence now, having to stop to clear her throat.

Still, he said nothing, looking like he had forgotten to speak completely.

"I'll go," Brienne said, hand so tight on Oathkeeper that she was losing feeling in her fingers.

"No!" Tormund growled in protest, smile flagging to a lopsided grin. He lifted his arm until a thatch of red appeared beneath an armpit. "I just wanted a bath. Found myself wanting to bury my face in Jon Snow's arsehole just to smell something sweeter than myself."

Brienne took another heavy step toward her discarded clothes.

"You're beautiful, you know," Tormund rasped as she backed out of the water; it already felt like it was turning to ice as the droplets clung to her skin. "Always liked a woman I knew could cut me down. My last wife tied me to the bed when she had her way with me." He wrung his wrist with one hand. "Miss that fucking woman every day."

Brienne found herself unmoving, clutching her tunic to her freezing front, her backside bare to the cool sunlight.

"I'm sorry," she found herself saying, before vowing to find a spring more private for her next bath.

"Sorry?" he said.

"For your wife."

"What? Oh." He looked like he had forgotten entirely what they had been talking about. Brienne looked down and realized her tunic had sagged from covering her front and was now only hanging from her waist, her breasts pointed and exposed to the frigid air.

"Excuse me," Brienne found herself saying, and for the second time in only a few days, found herself fleeing an interaction with the strangest of ideas swirling, unbidden, in her mind.


	5. Brienne/Jaime I

It was like her subconscious knew what her mind didn't. The closer they got to Riverrun, the more unrelenting the dreams became--until, frustratingly, Pod began to wake her up in the night to inform her that she was having nightmares.

"No, Pod," she said, her face buried in her arm. "Not nightmares."

Though they were nightmares, in a way, in the sense that they would never come to pass. The realistic part of her--honorable Brienne, knight Brienne, killer Brienne--thought she'd never see Jaime again. It was pragmatic, and perhaps a bit cold, but the Stranger hung over Westeros these days, and Jaime had found himself in enough trouble when he had two hands. She didn't like to think what may befall him now he had only one.

Of course, he still had two hands in her dreams. There, he was how she never saw him in life: healthy, whole, and clean-shaven, and looking at her just like he looked at her the day she rode away from King's Landing, sure she'd never see him again.

She was exhausted as they came over the brow to Riverrun. The dreams having kept her awake most of the night, the sight of trampled ground on the approach fraying her nerves, and the ache in her bones reminding her that she hadn't had a proper rest--nor a proper bed--in weeks.

And then she saw him. Was brought to him. Was alone with him, in his tent.

This was indeed a nightmare.

"What the hell are you doing here, Brienne?"

Anger. Annoyance. She'd appeared back in his life and this was how he greeted her. They were friends. She knew they were friends. But the greeting stung. The wildling--Tormund--had called her beautiful; she wondered if she was uglier than Jaime remembered.

The talk was ugly, too. Strategy, figuring out a way that both of them could get what they wanted. Brienne was there to fulfill a duty, but the tent was distracting, because she was certain she'd seen it before. The table they put between them--she had dreams about the wood, about the ceramic jug sitting atop it, about Jaime filling it with warm, scented water...about Jaime arching her neck back and pouring it through her hair, his fingers tracing warm lines down her spine. The table itself--leaning over, Jaime leaning across it toward her, her fingers in his scarf, his hand finding the back of her neck above the armor. The low bed in one corner--

But this wasn't the dream. This was the nightmare. This was Jaime looking at her like he did in those dreams, while on the inside Brienne felt like she was back in the pit with that bear being shouted at by its masters.

"Honor compels me to fight for Sansa's kin," Brienne found herself saying, back to the cold reality of coming winter, of this siege. Her lip was beginning to tremble. "To fight you."

Still that same look. That same dream-nightmare light in the eyes. And the voice--the tone of friendship, of wishing she weren't there, at the same time happiness, perhaps even relief, that she was.

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," he said.

And she left him ( _for the last time,_ she always thought), and barked at Pod to follow her before she began to cry.


	6. Brienne/Pod II

"'You'd fuck her, wouldn't you?'"

"What did you say, Pod?"

Pod looked up, his face burnt red, and nearly dropped the rabbit in the fire. "Sorry, m'lady?" he asked.

His knight…lady…whatever she was, was standing on the other side of the fire, both gloved fists on her hips. She had been in a short temper ever since she erupted from Jaime Lannister's tent. He could still hear the echoes of Bronn jeering after him as he had rushed to follow after her.

"What-did-you-say?" Brienne asked, a sharp pause between each word, as she glared down at him from her monstrous height.

"Nothing," Pod insisted. "I didn't say anything."

"Podrick," Brienne replied, "did you know you often think aloud?"

"Do I, m'lady?" Pod asked.

Brienne pressed her lips together and gave a shallow nod. She wasn't glaring at him anymore. She was…teasing him? No, no, that wasn't right. ~~Ser~~ Lady Brienne didn't know what teasing was. And if she did, Pod didn't think she'd bother to spend her efforts on him.

"Yes," Brienne replied. She collapsed onto the log beside him with a sigh, which only made Pod's ears grow hotter, and pulled off one glove. The leather released from her skin with a silken slither.

She pulled at the index finger of the other glove. "You seem uneasy," Brienne said.

"It's been a long day, m'lady," Pod replied, finding himself fixated on the glow of her neck in the firelight, and the glint to her pale hair.

"It has," she agreed. She did sound tired, despite the fact they had sheltered and napped off the long night beneath a thick canopy of trees as soon as they were a safe distance from Riverrun, hours from where their boat had landed and hours still from any village on the King's Road. Horseless, too. The few hamlets they came across were ruins from the Lannister raids, and the nearest town still at least another day's walk away.

Still, it was private, and relatively safe, and Lady Brienne was in the strangest mood he'd ever seen her. Alternately listless and angry, absent and sighing. Every so often he would look over while they were walking to see her idly grabbing at dry grass with her fingers. Or hold the back of a hand to her lips, then throw it away, scowling like she was angry at her own skin.

That same skin that was glowing now, like milk in moonlight.

"I'm your squire," Pod found himself saying--aloud, again--and finally dropped the rabbit in the fire.

"Podrick!" Brienne protested, and dove for it, catching one end and dropping it in the dirt before blowing at her fingers.

That scowl turned on him now, and for some reason, he found himself smiling.

"Do you need help undressing tonight, m'lady?" Pod said, sure he was purple from ears to toes.

"No," Brienne said. The frown was still drawing deep furrows across her brow. "As always, I'm perfectly able to do it myself."

"Right," Pod said. He began to dust off the rabbit on his trousers, trailing grease across the fabric. He looked up, began to say something, closed his mouth, began to say it again. "You'll let me know if you change your mind, though."

She squinted at him. Sucked on the tip of one finger.

"Fine," she said absently. She chewed on a fingernail, and ran her tongue across the burn. "I will."


	7. Brienne/Pod III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some drabbles are less drabble-like than other drabbles.
> 
> Seven hells, I feel dirty for writing this.

Pod smelled of dirt and mint.

It was a departure. Usually he smelled of campfire (Brienne had learned, sharing a horse for so many months in the times before he could properly ride his own), or harsh soap, but the smell drifted up from the cold floor as he tossed about in the blankets, obviously trying, and failing, to get comfortable.

He had been trying to sleep for an hour now, and so had she. She had sent him on errands all day--to collect ingredients for moon tea to bring back north, since with the coming winter, the ground was going cold and hard and inhospitable to growing tansy and pennyroyal. It was for the wilding women, Sansa had told her--they were desperate for relief from the Winter, and the growing pressure of more mouths to feed, and (Sansa did not mince words) the threat of more wights for the Others. Brienne had hesitated for a moment, wondering if there was something she should ask, when Sansa took it upon herself: "Not for me," she had said. Her lips pressed firm together. "I promise." She attempted a smile. "One less thing to worry about."

Moon tea. That's what they called it up north, and tansy tea here in the Riverlands. Pod had asked four times for the ingredients as he scribbled her instructions down, and thrice what it was for. She had had to explain it twice again before he nodded.

"You do understand the importance," Brienne told him, shoving the paper coarsely into his hand.

"Of course," Pod had said. "Tea or no fucking."

And before she could reply, he had run out of the room.

They'd talked little since he returned to the inn with his sack. He was pleased, but quiet, and she couldn't quite bring herself to ask him if something was wrong.

 _No fucking_.

Or, alternately, with the sacks that lay in the dark corner, _yes fucking_.

She wasn't sure she liked that word. She also didn't quite know what it looked like, or sounded like, or tasted like. She imagined it might taste of Jaime Lannister, but she didn't know what he tasted like, either. She imagined like gold, like the nervous press of Oathkeeper's hilt to her lips. Or honey, like the kind in jars stuck amongst the pennyroyal and tansy in that bag.

She had let Pod take off her armor tonight. She was sore from riding, the saddle slipping on a horse that was thinner than it should have been. Her shoulders were tight from point to point, and her left arm was sore in its socket. Pod had watched her as she tried to pull herself out of her mail, and it was only after her hair was in her eyes and her mouth and she was nearly suffocating in her breast plate did he think to say, "Can I help you, m'lady?"

He was on her before she could answer, up on a stool, lifting her plate over her head, undoing the buckles she was too sore to reach. Undoing the belt at her hips, fingers brushing her hipbone through her tunic. At least he was good at something.

He even pulled off her boots for her. He took each one with one hand at the back of the ankle, the other over the toe, and pulled.

His fingers found the sole of one foot. Massaged it gently. _Bliss._

"What are you doing, Pod?" Brienne had asked, her voice sounding odd.

"You seemed sore, m'lady."

She put her foot down on the dusty floor. "Thank you," she said.

He looked up at her with the strangest expression on his face. Strange even for Pod. His hand was still on her toes, his thumb digging into the webbing between the first and second, sending all sorts of odd feelings shooting up her leg, circling, spiraling, narrowing into her hips.

Feelings that she was having difficulty stifling even now.

She could still smell the mint, and the dirt, and the slight acrid smell of the tansy. She could hear Pod, too, his slight shuffling and muttering in the dark.

She threw the covers aside and pulled down her tunic. Reached for Oathkeeper, the belt clanking. Stood, nearly stepping on Pod, and re-fastened it around her hips, then reached blindly for her boots, accidentally grabbing a handful of Pod's hair.

"M'lady?" Pod said, not sounding at all tired.

"You have the bed," she told him. "I'm going downstairs."

She went downstairs. The inn was still alive with the music they could hear in faint strains whenever someone opened the door to the corridor outside their room. Men were down there, smallfolk, mostly, drinking and singing and blood-letting with drunken knife-games, trying to be the ones to lose the least fingers. Serving wenches were hurrying with tankards of ale, dodging groping hands and ignoring amorous shouts--except for the few who Brienne spotted taking coins for what would transpire later when the bar had shut.

Brienne found a table to herself in the corner, near a knight with armor Brienne vaguely recognized as Tully. He had a pretty, plump girl in his lap, was pulling at her golden hair with his fingers. They were obviously drunk, but he appeared to know what he was doing--Brienne couldn't imagine a girl making those sort of noises in public unless she wasn't in full control of her faculties. Thrusting down against his leg as he swept a finger beneath the low neckline of her gown, dipped it lower until Brienne could see the movement of his knuckles across the fullest point of her breast. His other hand pulling up her skirt until everything from pale ankle to milky soft thigh was exposed.

Normally, Brienne would have looked away as soon as a girl found her way onto a man's lap. Usually, Brienne wouldn't even be down here when the men came out to drink and whore and lose money and limbs. But tonight she couldn't look away, and she couldn't stop thinking that Pod was upstairs right now…Pod, who, legend had it, could make women make noises just like the girl across from her was making right now.

"Good evening, my lady."

Brienne jumped, and her beer spilled. The man was looking right at her, smirking, while the girl in his lap giggled and leaned to whisper into his ear, one heavy breast hanging loose from her dress. "Do you care to join us?" he called out. He slipped a hand higher up the girl's skirt, and she gasped. "I do like a big girl."

Brienne slid her tankard across the table. Stood up, re-adjusted her belt (the man's eyes went wide, as he saw how large she truly was, and the girl gave another small gasp), and bowed before banging back up the stairs to her room.

The door slammed behind her. The candle, now lit, sputtered and flared.

Pod wasn't asleep.

Pod was naked.

His back was to her, spine straight; he was taking a cloth to each underarm, wringing it out in the bowl. He didn't even turn. It was like he hadn't noticed her coming in, was so lost in thought (or lack of it) that it had blocked out sound as well as all his senses. No wonder he was so shit in a fight.

"Pod," Brienne said.

He didn't jump. He only turned around slowly, and ran the cloth down the center of his chest, the lean valley of his abdomen.

Brienne suddenly focused intently on the candle. It was forming a black halo in her vision, hollowing out her eyesight until she felt she might go blind.

"M'lady," Pod said, calmly, completely unlike himself. "I thought I might bathe--just while you were gone. I thought--"

"That's fine," Brienne said. She didn't move from the door. Her hand was on her sword again, a nervous habit, like she could shake off the peculiar feelings in her belly with the thrust of a blade.

"I can blow out the candle."

"No," Brienne said. "That is not necessary."

Still, neither of them moved.

"Lady Brienne," Pod said softly, "I'm very sorry for always calling you ser. You don't look like a ser."

"That's fine, Pod," Brienne ground out.

"I didn't mean you look like a man or anything," Pod carried on, while Brienne could feel her knuckles tighten on Oathkeeper so much the skin threatened to crack. "You're quite shapely beneath all that armor."

"Pod."

"That's all," Pod said. He reached for his breeches and pulled them onto one leg, then stumbled a bit before pulling them onto the other. Hiked them up his hips and fastened them, the belt clanking, still loose.

"Why are you bringing this up now?" Brienne said, now staring at the floor, the strange flame-blindness making it look like the wood was host to a gaping black hole.

"Something Ser Bronn said," Pod admitted.

"What did he say?" Brienne asked.

He hesitated, and Brienne urged him, not unkindly, "What was it?"

"He asked if I was fucking you, m'lady," Pod said.

Brienne's ears went hot. "And you told him no?"

"Of course I did, m'lady."

"Good," Brienne said, not sure if she meant it. Would she have had Pod lie? What would Jaime have thought if Bronn told him that she was sleeping with her squire…the squire Jaime had given her? Would she still be so ugly in his eyes?

Pod still wasn't moving, still standing there half-naked, the blankets balled at his feet.

"There's another thing, m'lady," Pod said.

"Yes?" she asked, impatient.

"He said Ser Jaime wanted to fuck you, m'lady."

Brienne heard a loud _thud_ and a _thunk_ \--she didn't realize she'd slumped back against the door until she was sitting on the floor, Oathkeeper's hilt digging painfully into her side.

"M'lady?" Pod said, taking a step forward. Brienne looked up. There was a black hole where his face should have been. "Are you feeling well, m'lady?"

Just an hour ago Brienne hadn't liked that word, _Fuck_ , and now she couldn't stop thinking it, like it was the only word she knew. Lady Sansa had told her about one of the Stark servants, a man with giant's blood, a simpleton who used to cart around her little brother and could only say the word _Hodor_. Brienne imagined herself in the same position, with only Jaime Lannister on her mind, walking around and able to say nothing but _Fuck._

She couldn't imagine it before, but she could imagine it now, what it looked like, and tasted like, and felt like. Just like she imagined it in the small hours of the night, when Jaime slept close beside her before she returned him to King's Landing. When she would look at him in the dark, her mind going in so many directions it felt like it was being drawn and quartered, and listen to the sound of his breathing, and reach down beneath her blankets to the waistband of her breeches. She couldn't see him, but she imagined she could. Feel him, too. His hands-- _hand_ \--on her breast, as she reached up and rubbed a thumb across her hard nipple. His mouth on her neck, licking and sucking and biting at the throb of her racing pulse. His knee between her legs, pressing in as hard as the heel of her palm beneath her trousers. His voice rough in her ear, gasping, _You're beautiful. You're beautiful_.

Despite washing, Pod still smelled of mint. And he was still shirtless, and kneeling between legs Brienne didn't realize she had opened.

"M'lady," he said quietly. His brown--not gold--hair was sticking to his forehead, damp at the ends. His breath smelled of mint, too. He unbuckled her belt, and Oathkeeper slid to the floor. "I'm not a skilled fighter," Pod said, "but there are other things I'm good at. Ser Jaime knew that when he gave me to you…"

Brienne looked up at him, frowning. He was closer to her than she realized, his knees pressed into the softer flesh of her inner thighs.  She was a head taller than him, but now he was the one looking down at her, and it was like he was a different person: the foolishness gone, replaced by the strangest confidence…and it was (she thought she'd never think it)… _attractive_.

"So in a way…" Even Pod's voice was lower, manlier, like if she gave him back his axe, he could take a man's head clean off. "…I'm here to be of _service_ to you, m'lady."

"Shut up, Pod," Brienne tried to say. Actually, she wasn't sure if she had tried, because suddenly she was having her second-ever kiss, and she was the one kissing _him_. Like she wanted to, her fingers in his damp hair, pulling his mouth to hers as he pushed her back against the door, pinned her there with more un-Pod-like strength. The back of her head pressed almost painfully against the wood as his teeth scraped down her lower lip, and his hand grasped her thigh as if it were a hilt, and his thumb found the triangle of swollen flesh above her woman's place and dipped it lower until Brienne gasped and tilted her head back against the door.

"I've never been with a maid," Pod breathed into her ear. He bent to run the tip of his tongue down a scar on her neck, and she gasped. "You are a maid, aren't you, m'lady?"

"Maid of Tarth," Brienne said, and jolted back against the door as he skimmed a nail down the crease of one junction between thigh and mound.

"Maybe I can finally teach you something?"

 _Maybe_ , Brienne tried to say again, but again, it wouldn't come out. All that did escape her lips was the strangled gasp of a woman with a man's hand down her breeches, sliding a finger down the crease of her aching lower lips, dipping between them to brush across the swollen nub that she had once found was a place for pleasure, back when she would lay alone at night, thinking of Jaime.

"Women like this," Pod whispered, and kissed her again, so briefly that Brienne found herself full of regret when he pulled back. The regret disappeared as he flicked his thumb from side to side, and brushed another finger between the lips. "And this…" It slipped lower, sliding easily, once more making her gasp. "…is the cunt. I think. Can I see?"

Her untied the string of her breeches, and she helped him, perhaps a bit frantically, pull them down her hips, tug them from her pale skin along with her boots. His face was lost in shadow as he slid onto his belly before her and breathed a hot breath on her…her... _cunt_.

"Yes," he said. The thumb returned, flicking back, forth, back forth, so slowly Brienne wanted to thrust against his hand in relief, wanted to shout at him to do things properly, but at the same time wanted him to torture her more. Then a finger slid back between her lips, into her cunt without restriction, and Brienne made a strangled sound and once more banged her head against the door.

"That's it," Pod said, in the same rare tone she used to praise him.

"Pod--" Brienne said, squirming.

Pod crooked his finger inside her, like he was beckoning her to come. "Yes, m'lady?" he asked, the words a vibration, not an inch away from her mound. He inched forward another hair's breadth, his belly sliding across the floor.

"Please--" she pled, for once not hating herself for begging.

When he spoke again, his lips brushed hers. "Yes, m'lady."

His tongue flicked out, slid across her nub, making her gasp once more. Flicked back. He inched forward more, taking it into his mouth. Sucked at it. Ran his teeth across it. Pressed the flat of his tongue against it, and flicked it once more.

Brienne's bare feet slid, frantic, looking for leverage, finding nothing but dusty floor. Pod had one hand on her thigh, holding it apart from the other, the other hand still at her cunt, two fingers now, thrusting agonizingly slowly inside of her, slower than a sleeping man's breathing.

"Pod--" Brienne begged again.

Pod wasn't listening. No surprise there. He was lost in his world again. In a world of tongues and nubs and lapping and gasps and moans. In a world that was made of his fingers inside of her, thrusting in to the knuckles, fluttering them against a spot inside of her that made it feel like his tongue was there, too, sliding against that spot, igniting it, setting the fuse. He was now propped up on one shoulder, his other hand moving in shadow, pressing hard against the bulge in his breeches.

He sucked, groaned into her. Pulled away in a moment that left Brienne wanting to cry.

"You have a beautiful cunt, m'lady," he told her, eyes finding hers as he rested the crown of his soft head against her thigh. "Prettiest one I've ever seen."

Three fingers. Faster. Faster than her breathing. Faster than the gallop of a horse. Filling her, not painfully, only until she was full. Starry. Alight. Swirling like the colors at the Scarlet Falls.

"You feel like a maid should,  I think," he said, his voice still impossibly deep, broken with his own pleasure. "Tight. Wet."

"Gods," Brienne gasped.

"This isn't how Ser Jaime would have you, though," Pod said. He pulled away, and Brienne's thigh nudged into his ear, urging him on. "Not on the floor. Come."

His fingers slid out of her, and he grabbed her by the backside, pulling her to her feet like he had shouldered the bag of moon tea. With surprising strength, he spun her and thrust her back against the bed until she fell back onto the mattress, tangled in her tunic as she tried to pull it over her head.

Pod's breeches clanked as they slid to the floor, pinged as he flung them from his feet.

Pod took her by the waist, tried to slide her back on the featherbed, and she helped him, wincing at the tightness in her shoulders, then hissing as he bent to skim her nipple with his tongue.

"Ser Jaime would have you like this." He groaned, and she felt him there, smooth and hot at her entrance, hard as well as soft. She'd seen it before, but never felt it, and had never seen it hard. Oh yes, she'd heard the stories…and from Lady Sansa, of all people…but she had never thought a cock could be pretty. She was wrong.

"Like a lord takes a lady," Pod said, face tense as he stared down at her.

He pressed against her and she grunted, like she was parrying a blow.

" _Fuck, Pod_ ," Brienne gasped.

"Yes, m'lady," Pod said, and entered her.

There were feathers under her palms, her skin, in her fingernails. Holes in the featherbed. Feathers on her skin, as well, fluttering across her nipples--no, that was Pod's tongue, and his fingers, as he leaned over her, bending to brush and rub and coax her skin until it was tight, responsive, embarrassing with need.

And inside of her…seven hells, she didn't know anything could feel like that. Nothing like his fingers, or her own fingers for that matter. None of that same unyielding hardness. Just skin and iron, soft and firm, sliding torturously in to thrust against a certain unexplainable spot on the map of her consciousness. A spot that made her make sounds she'd never heard before, and certainly never made before, and would have been blushing to hear if she cared at all in this moment.

"Ser Jaime wants to fuck you," Pod said again, and Brienne moaned. "He wants you, m'lady, and even the stupidest man can see it. Even I can see it. He would be jealous if he could see us like this, m'lady, me inside of you. He'd want to be the one doing this to you." He thrust into her, slow and deep. Pulled out as she gasped, half-listening, tears pooling at the corners of her eyes. "He'll want to make you his lady wife so he can have you every night like this."

Pod bent down low, into her neck, whispered low into her ear. Held half-out of her like he was drawing an arrow, making her tilt her hips, desperate for contact.

"And he'll fill you like this." He thrust forward, even deeper, making her cry out. Withdrew, thrust again. The black hole was widening, deepening, taking everything with it until there was nothing in this room but the sound of Pod's voice in her ear, his hand between them, sliding slick and moth-wing-light against her nub, the exquisite, aching pressure of him inside of her...and Jaime, who was always here, inside of her just like Pod was, pleasuring her to the point of pain, just like Pod was.

"And fill you with his seed, m'lady," Pod groaned, "and with his child. And he'll love you, m'lady, even more than you love him."

Brienne didn't know if she was coming or crying or dying. Even those quiet nights with her fingers, she'd never come like this. Not with these noises, or these fiery-hot feelings, or the feel of Pod's quickening thrusts inside of her, driving her higher and until she felt like she was hanging over the edge of Evenfall's highest tower, the sparkling blue of the sapphire waters below.

Then everything was warm water, the release of muscles, the thrill of landing a dive. It was Pod groaning with his own release, and Brienne shouting loud enough to wake the Others, and Pod kissing her neck as he rolled off her. Kissing her belly as he gently swept the damp cloth between her legs while she still lay there, twitching, unable to move.

Only after a time, when they lay side by side, catching their breaths, did Pod finally speak again, his voice back to its normal pitch, its normal dim questions.

"What happened to your maidenhead, m'lady?" he asked.

"Go to sleep, Pod," she said, turning against the wall.

Pod turned his back to face hers. "Yes, m'lady." He blew out the candle, and the room went dark. "Good night, m'lady."


	8. Brienne/Renly II

"Duck!"

"Seven hells--"

Renly was laughing, which wasn't unusual, and Brienne was trying to keep herself from wincing, because wincing would be admitting that Renly was right and that riding bareback was obviously a terrible idea. Her thighs were burning, her nethers stinging, and Star Eyes was surlier than usual; Brienne could swear he was kicking back his legs, jolting her around more than usual, just to dole out punishment.

Over logs, under branches (a few which Brienne barely missed--Renly conveniently forgot to mention many of them, though she supposed as someone shorter in stature both on horseback and the ground, she could not hold against him what he didn't know), sideways past boulders, dodging around pools. Star Eyes was wild between her legs, and, Seven above, needed better feeding than this. Brienne swore she could feel every bone along his spine.

"Mind--" Renly called out, but it was too late. Star Eyes had kicked off a boulder and Brienne let out a yelp so loud that Renly skidded to a stop in the mud.

"All right, Brienne?" he called out, kicking his horse to trot back, winding sideways toward her through the trees.

"Fine," she replied, holding on tight to Star Eyes' reins. She wasn't sure how she had ended up on the ground, but at least she was still on her feet. Looking up, though, she couldn't even say if she knew where she was.

"Don't suppose you'd walk me back?" she wheezed. Her attempts to stand up straight were successful, at least. Her nethers smarted, but she was used to pain. It was starting to fade already.

She took a step forward and winced.

"Just one moment," she said. She took a step backward into the brush--easier that way--and waved Renly around. "Turn your back," she told him, and he grinned at her handsomely, and turned, his arms in the air.

Brienne found a fern to squat behind, pulled down her breeches.

And frowned at the gusset of her smallclothes.

There was blood there, and on her thighs, too, now that she reached down to feel for it. Sticky but not heavy, nothing like the usual, and it was not anywhere near the quarter moon.

"Renly," Brienne called out, unthinking, for a moment, what she was calling him to. "I think I might be dying."

He was there in a matter of moments, looking down at her with his dagger drawn. He didn't even flinch as he stared down, frowning, at her smallclothes stretched between her knees.

Then he smiled.

"Don't mock me," she told him, her ears and cheeks hot. "This isn't my moon blood. It's not my time."

"Lucky girl," Renly said, still smiling. He gestured at her knees--her blood--with his dagger, and, self-conscious, she stood and drew her breeches back up to her hips, fumbling for her belt.

"Apparently it's fairly common," he said. "According to Lady Margaery, at least. Now it means it won't hurt when you lay with a man. It shouldn’t, anyway. And now you can be with whomever you want and no one will be the wiser, as long as you don't grow wider."

He re-sheathed his dagger, and Brienne found herself go even hotter with both his mention of _when_ she lay with a man and not _if_ …and with that familiar jealousy of the famous beauty, Lady Margaery of Highgarden, undoubtedly Lord Renly's future betrothed.

"My maidenhead," Brienne muttered, fumbling with her belt, still not quite believing it. "I'm no longer a maid."

"Brienne--" Renly began.

"What do I tell Septa Roelle?"

"The truth." He held a hand out to her, to pull her back up onto the path, not even wincing at the sight of blood on her fingers.

He let her go when she reached the top, handed her the reins of her horse, and went to retrieve his, so they might make the walk to Evenfall by suppertime.

"And Brienne…" Renly cut into her thoughts when she was feet in front of him, aching and brooding, trying not to waddle.

She didn't turn around.

"You should know," he said. "No one gets to decide whether or not you're a maid."

Starry Eyes did a little jaunt beside her, like he agreed, and Brienne gripped his reins tighter.

Renly's voice was warm, like bath water, honey and milk. "No one," he repeated, "except you."

**

For some reason, Septa Roelle took no convincing. Brienne said sorry in seven different ways, and explained it seven different times, and fourteen times, Septa held up a hand and said calmly, "I believe you, child. Now, shush."

Brienne did _not_ tell her, however, of the other things Renly had said. About lying with a man no longer hurting. About her being able to do it now, without evidence, as long as she didn't find herself with child.

She didn't stop thinking about it, either. Especially when she was with Renly. Especially when she'd recovered and was back out _riding_ with Renly (saddled, this time), easily sauntering side-by-side into more private parts of the isle.

She couldn't, however, figure out how to bring the subject into their conversation. At least not without him noticing.

"Do you remember the ball?" she found herself asking him, blushing, as always, when she thought about the court, and the dance, and the kiss he'd given her--in front of everyone--that night. Brienne the Beauty, for that small moment, the truest beauty at the ball, loved by Renly Baratheon, the one lordling there who had no money in the pool. Who was kind, and good, and kissed her because he wanted to.

But he had not kissed her since. She'd heard him talk of Margaery, of course, and what was Tarth to the might of Highgarden? Still, he did not talk of the lady's beauty, at least no more than he talked of her brother Ser Loras's. And Renly could be anywhere right now, but he had chosen to be here, in Tarth, with her.

"Yes, Brienne," he told her, grinning, "I remember the ball."

She couldn't figure out where to go from here. They'd reached a fork in the path, and her horse halted, waiting for direction as she pulled back on the reins.

Renly chose left. She followed.

"It's--" Brienne began. Stopped. "What you said before about my…"

She closed her mouth and swallowed a sigh.

"Is Lady Brienne curious?" he asked. He looked at her over his shoulder. His smile was kind.

"I can't lie," she replied.

"No," he said, still smiling. "You can't."

"Are _you_ not curious?" she asked.

He turned, spurred his horse on to go a bit faster, into a trot. Brienne followed on their heels, Star Eyes more subdued today now that he'd taken her maidenhead.

"Sometimes," he called back, no longer looking at her. Instead, his posture was impeccable, shoulders back, head held high like the king he might someday be. "I've never been with a woman."

"Not even Lady Margaery?" Brienne asked, knowing it was not her place to ask.

"No," he admitted.

He stopped suddenly, and Brienne, knowing the island better than he, came into a gentler halt beside him.

They were overlooking the strait, high up on the Cut, a cliff of white marble over fifty feet high. If it were a clearer day, they might see the other side, the green around Storm's End, but the strait was sheathed in mist, turning the waters from their usual sapphire to topaz, emerald, flint.

It felt private, and quiet, and Renly was still sat beside her on his horse, refusing to meet her eyes.

"Brienne," he said. His voice was quiet, and gentle. She almost had to strain to hear. "I'm afraid," he continued, "you are too much a woman for me."

Anyone else and it would have been mocking. It would have been delivered with laughter, or jabs of fists across the table, or gold dragons flying to fulfill some bet.

But this was Renly, and Renly was not cruel.

"I don't understand," she admitted, and her voice was a twentieth of her size.

"I thought perhaps I could overlook it," he said. "That if it would be anyone, it would be you, but I've seen you--I mean, to look at you…." She had never seen him blush before. "You are no doubt a woman, Lady Brienne," he said, "and I am afraid, therefore, not my type."

Brienne frowned, and watched the mist drift closer, start to close in on the shoreline far below.

"Oh," she said, and thought of the look on Septa Roelle's face when she made her explanations, and how easy it had been to convince her that Lord Renly hadn't been the one to claim her. " _Oh_ ," she said again.

"Yes," Renly replied. The grin returned, but it was sadder now, and keen to flee. "Be heartened, my friend," he told her, his voice bolder than he looked. "There is someone out there for you. And if I had a choice in this, you must know." His gloved hand found hers, and she held it tight. "It would undoubtedly be you."


	9. Brienne/Pod IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Thank you thank you thank you for your comments and kudos. They are what's keeping me writing._

The nights grew longer the further north they went, and so did Pod's attentions toward Brienne.

It was as though he became a different person as soon as his (or her--he wasn't picky) clothes came off. As soon as one of them was naked, he suddenly knew what he was doing, was aware of his surroundings, and said these…these… _things_.

Things that had Brienne happily crying herself to sleep, or, alternately, falling upon him up as soon as he'd started snoring, and began to fumble beneath his breeches, desperate to wake him so he could say those same words to her, over and over again, so she could believe they might be real.

They were kicked out of their first inn at the Neck. Pod stood there with their things bundled beneath his arms while she fastened her tunic, and he said, "We must be too loud for them, m'lady."

"I suppose we must, Pod," Brienne admitted. She turned to their horse before he could see her blushing. "And I suppose we must sleep outside from now on."

They did, and there they woke no one but the foxes, pigeons, crows. And all in all...other than his expert ministrations, his hands upon her breasts beneath the blankets, the words whispered into her ear in the dark...nothing had changed. He was still Podrick Payne, dim squire, shit at everything except making her come as soon as he entered her. He said nothing of their exploits in daylight, and was so little like his nocturnal self when the sun rose that it was almost easy for Brienne to forget that those things happened at all.

 _Almost_.

"You're my squire," Brienne found herself telling him one evening as she skinned a rabbit, and Pod started building up kindling for their fire.

Jaime would laugh at her for that--that Pod-like statement of fact--but Pod only looked up at her blankly, as if it were normal for her to speak her own thoughts aloud.

"Yes, m'lady," he said, and muttered a curse as his carefully constructed tent of kindling fell down.

"I know you are meant to obey me in all things," she said, feeling herself begin to blush again. "But I do not mean _all_ things."

"I know, m'lady," Pod said. His tongue ( _his tongue, slipping between her folds, his dark eyes unusually sharp, watching her from between her white thighs)_ edged between his lips as he added one more twig to his stack, and the kindling once more collapsed inward. "I am doing nothing I wouldn't do if not given the choice," he said.

"Right," Brienne said, thinking she understood. "Good. That's good."

"Yes, m'lady," Pod said. "That's good."

Still, she knew the feeling that was beginning to grow in her belly, the odd pit that opened up every time he had her, and seemed to grow deeper the further north they went. It wasn't just the moon tea, which she'd had a midwife brew for her before leaving the Riverlands. It wasn't the fear that she would have to keep him secret if she was to continue to have him once they passed the walls of Winterfell.

It was guilt, and the thought--why would he have her, if she could give him someone else?

"What do you think of Lady Sansa?" Brienne asked him one night, as he sat mashing berries into his porridge.

"She is very beautiful, m'lady," Pod said.

The pit in Brienne's stomach gaped wider.

"She is," she agreed. "She has not had the easiest of marriages."

"I understand that, m'lady," Pod said, face tense as he mashed harder.

"There is the possibility that she may--"

Brienne stopped, decided on something, and also decided that it was not her decision, and not her time. Winterfell was another three day's ride away, and there was enough moon tea in her flask and feeling left in her nethers to enjoy the nights until then.

"Do you fancy a swim this evening, Pod?" Brienne found herself asking, trying to smother a smile.

Pod looked up at her from his bowl, the unusual sharpness once more appearing in his eyes.

"Yes, m'lady," he said. "I think I do."


	10. Brienne & Sansa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Damn it, we're not going to pass the Bechdel Test, are we?_

"My lady," Brienne began one morning, a sennight after they returned to Winterfell. She was standing straighter today, the feeling coming fully back to her nethers, though her head was hurting, her stomach making little regretful pangs, her heartbeat strong with the rush and reminder of her honor. 

"I am no longer in need of a squire."

"Are you not?" Sansa said. She frowned at Brienne, and moved across to pour her some wine--a gesture that was happening with growing frequency; Brienne was beginning to think that that was how Sansa was learning to pry out secrets. Jaime had once told her that it was his own sister's favored tool, and Brienne frowned to see that habit passed on to her charge.

"I'm not thirsty, my lady," Brienne told her.

"Neither am I," Sansa replied. She took no cup of her own but held it out to Brienne. She took it, but didn't drink.

"What has offended you?" Sansa asked, and Brienne shifted uneasily on her feet (when was the last time she had had an easy conversation with her lady? She couldn’t remember), and set the cup aside.

"Pod is man grown," Brienne began slowly, her tongue thick in her mouth. She hoped it didn't look like she was blushing. "He should move on. I do not need a squire, and he is in need of a more…patient teacher."

"I thought you got on well," Sansa said. She sat back on the edge of her bed, her hands folded in her slender lap, looking far too eager to direct this conversation to places where Brienne did not want it to go.

"We do," Brienne replied. She picked up the goblet, took a sip. Spilled a drop on her doublet. "It is only--"

She stopped, at a loss. Looked up.

Lady Sansa was smiling.

"My lady?" Brienne said, and she could feel her face on fire.

"Did you know that Podrick Payne often thinks aloud?" Sansa said, looking like she was holding back laughter.

"Seven hells," Brienne swore.

Sansa picked up the sweet wine, and sipped it straight from the carafe.

"Who knows, my lady?" Brienne asked, grimacing.

"Jon," Sansa said. "A few of his men. The serving girls. Most…everyone, actually. You were not quiet--"

"It was only the first night," Brienne ground out through her teeth.

"One night was enough," Sansa said. She set the jug aside and tidily rearranged herself. "Fine," she said. "We will release him from your service. You are more than welcome to" --she gestured with her hand, a little sweeping motion with her elegant fingers-- "continue your friendship, but I only ask that it is somewhere far from here, not in the room next to me in the middle of the night."

"My deepest apologies, my lady."

"It's fine," Sansa sighed, then allowed another small smile. "I'm only jealous, really."

She played with the embroidery on her quilt, and Brienne took another fortifying sip of her wine, wishing she could drown in it.

Then Sansa's smile reappeared, and Brienne's fingers tightened on the stem of her cup.

"I don't suppose, Lady Brienne..." Sansa said. The smile was gone now, replaced by hesitance, the open expression of hope and embarrassment and a small trace of fear. "…you would recommend his services?"

"Are you in need of a squire, my lady?" Brienne asked. The words were dry.

"I'm not sure," Sansa told the wall. A bead pinged off from the gold embroidery of her coverings. "It depends."

"Yes, my lady," Brienne said. What colour did wildfire burn? What about dragon's breath? Her skin burnt with that same fire. "He is certainly more than adequate, though I will recommend he practice his discretion."

"Good," Sansa said. Brienne wished she could blush so prettily, but knew she never would. "Good," Sansa said again, quieter. "Bring him to me tonight, if he so chooses."

"Yes, my lady," Brienne said.

"Thank you," Sansa replied, and Brienne bowed, stomach rending, and with the strangest weight of uncertainty, left her lady to her swirling thoughts.


	11. Brienne/Tormund IV, Sansa/Pod

She never thought she'd miss him, but she did.

It didn't help that the door between Brienne's chambers and Sansa's was deliberately thin, and anything louder than the lightest snore, or the sound of sheets rustling in the night, was easily heard from one room or the other. She knew the moment Pod came to knock; she easily recognized his odd, awkward gait out in the corridor. Left it, deciding it posed no danger. Heard the sound of knocking at Sansa's chamber door.

Pod's voice: "M'lady?"

Sansa replied with something that Brienne couldn't hear.

She heard the slam, then a silence so long that she thought that Lady Sansa might have had a change of heart and sent the squire ( _not my squire, not anymore_ ) away.

Then she heard something else: the quiet murmur of voices, the sound of wine glasses being set down. Brienne lay back on her bed, uncomfortable despite the inches of feathers beneath her, sweating in her tunic and bare legs and wishing that she'd asked the maid to show her how to shut off the heat to her room.

There was more murmuring next door, though she still couldn't understand what was said. She didn't know why she should care. He wasn't her husband, or her slave. He could do what he wanted, and apparently whom he wanted, and he wasn't (she had learned, when she asked him several hours earlier) opposed to going to Lady Sansa this evening, to see what she might want from him.

"You do realize what that means, Pod," Brienne had asked him flatly, wishing he would plead ignorance, reconfirm his dedication to her, say that he only lived to serve her. A stupid fancy, she knew. A poor substitute for the man she loved--and despite Pod's protestations of otherwise, surely he felt that _serving_ her was only part of his duty.

"Yes, m'lady, I know what it means," Pod had replied. He looked at her blankly, then added, "You mean sex."

Brienne had sighed.

Brienne sighed now, sweating, her hands resting loose across her ribs. She was perfectly still, like she was lying in wait, listening hard, knowing she should leave.

There was a groan of wood next door, and a muffled laugh. Then another hard thump--wood on stone. Another.

"Seven hells," Brienne whispered.

Sansa was so quiet Brienne was in half a mind to walk in on them, just to make sure she was still breathing.  Pod, however, was not quiet. She could hear him clearly, his voice so deep it barely sounded like his--the rhythmic, rasping groan: "Little bird, little bird."

Her door slammed closed behind her. The corridor was empty. The night bit her skin, and it was still snowing, white drifts building up on the roofs, the top of the gates. She'd forgotten Oathkeeper--it still leaned up against her bed. She felt naked without it.

"Can't decide if I like you better in clothes or out of them."

Brienne didn't jump, this time. She'd known he was there. She'd passed him when she walked past the King's room, had met his eyes as she went past. Knew he would follow after her.

She sucked on her upper lip and crossed her arm across her chest, sure that her teats were puckering in the cold.

She could think of nothing to say. She didn't know why she was here. She could have gone anywhere to give Sansa privacy, but she had chosen here in the empty yard, late at night, watching the snow.

"You're rid of your boy," Tormund said. His voice was gravelly, odd, his accent stranger than Jon Snow's. She wasn't sure if she liked it.

"Yes," Brienne answered simply, turning away. She wondered if it was true, what Sansa said, about the wildlings kidnapping their wives. She was in half a mind to hope for it, another to bash him over the head if he tried.

"Shame," Tormund said. "You'll be needing a man, then." She glared back at him, and his face broke into that same insipid grin he'd graced her with since before he'd even begun to speak to her. "Have anyone in mind?" he asked.

 _Yes,_ Brienne thought. _His name is Jaime. He's golden, a Lannister. The best friend I've ever had. And he's hundreds of miles south, probably fucking his pretty twin sister as we speak_.

"Not you," she told him, finally allowing him--quite unwillingly--a little smile.

"Again a shame," Tormund replied. "If you change your mind, I make pretty daughters. Though can't promise any prettier than your king."

Before Brienne could reply, he had stepped back inside, and Brienne found herself both grateful for his absence, and wishing--very strangely--that he had stayed.


	12. Brienne/Tormund V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I sacrifice believable plot for an excuse for more banging.

Brienne woke up one morning to the sound of melting snow, and the arrival of two ravens from the south. She could hear their squabbling behind the adjoining door to Sansa's room, and the low voices of her lady and her lady's half-brother.

Usually, Brienne waited at Sansa's door until she knew that Pod was gone, then she would enter silently, unnoticed, there to serve, and protect, and be an invisible presence behind her. Today it was not Pod, but Snow, and he and Lady Sansa both stopped talking as soon as she entered the room, light expressions giving way to grave looks that passed between brother and sister.

"Your Grace," Brienne said, bowing, "my lady. Good morning."

"Brienne--" Sansa began.

"The first morning of a poor man's summer," Jon said, an uneasy smile (was that a smile? Brienne had thought him incapable) once more appearing. "And we hope there are many more like it. Now, excuse me," he said, and left them.

Brienne squared up to Lady Sansa, cocked her head to one side.

"My lady?" she asked.

Unlike Snow's, Sansa's smile hadn't yet made a reappearance. She worried her hands before her, and didn't look Brienne in the face.

"A poor man's summer," she said, repeating her brother's words. "A raven arrived from the citadel this morning. Winter has retreated from Winterfell, back north of the Wall, just for now--a year, perhaps. Enough time to build up our stores, and gather more men, if we're able. A respite." She sighed, her shoulders sagging. Behind her, one of the ravens sauntered up and down the windowsill, squeaking. "For which I am grateful," she finished.

"That is good news, my lady," Brienne agreed, still uneasy. "But there is something else bothering you."

Without answering, Sansa turned to her desk. Picked up a scroll, its seal broken, and crossed to give it to Brienne.

Brienne took it. It curled in her fingers.

"My lady?" she said, smoothing the vellum in her hands. Turned it to expose the seal, one she knew better than the Starks'.

"It's from Tarth," Sansa said, and from the look on her face, Brienne already knew what was in it.

**

Everything was dripping. The world was melting, and while Winterfell was louder--shouting, laughter, the clash of swordfight in the training yard--everything felt dulled around her, muffled, like she had wool in her ears.

Pod had caught up with her somewhere along the way. She couldn't remember where from. It was like she had thought of him--however briefly--and he was there. However, he remained, even after her thoughts ( _My beauty, his brains? Tarth would be damned_ ) had dismissed him.

"You're not leaving," Pod said, racing to catch up with her.

Brienne didn't know why she was in a hurry, but it felt like there was no time to lose. If Pod could not keep up, it was not her responsibility. It was not his business, either, but yet, he followed her anyway.

"No," Brienne answered. "I swore an oath. Besides"--her insides panged--"my father will be dead by the time I reach him. I'm staying."

"But you're an only child, m'lady," Pod said. Chickens scattered at his feet, and he nearly tripped over a cockerel mid-crow. "Surely your father needs you now more than ever."

"My father needs an heir, Pod," Brienne said. They passed Lyanna Mormont, Lady of Bear Island, lecturing one of her men by the stables. "And I am in the mind to provide him one."

"M'lady?" Pod said, confused.

"Leave me!" Brienne thundered, and Pod stopped--for the best, as he had nearly flattened himself into the guesthouse wall.

She found Tormund Giantsbane in the Godswood, sitting on the ground by the wooden gate. He looked up when she arrived, happy to see her, as always, and no longer tongue-tied.

"It's quiet in here," he explained. "Quieter than out there. And it doesn't smell of shit." He dusted his hands on his knees and stood as if to leave her. "I suppose the lady wants to be alone," he said.

"I don't serve the old gods," Brienne reminded him. "I am here for you."

"For me, eh." Even though the day was warmer, he still looked heavy, powerful, behind his furs. And though it was warmer, Brienne was freezing. She could imagine herself draped in his cloaks, swaddled in them, the brush of rabbit and bear fur across her skin, softened by wear and oil.

"My lady," Tormund rasped, always mocking, never cruel, and he dipped as though sweeping into a curtsy. "I am at your command."

"Good," she said. "Because I have need of you."

"I live to serve you," Tormund carried on. He grinned at her. "Free folk don't kneel, but I'd make an exception for a woman like you."

"I have no need for your mouth, Giantsbane," Brienne replied, unsmiling. "Only your seed."

"Oh." Giantsbane looked down, and wrung the handle of his axe between his hands. Looked up at her, a single red eyebrow arching high toward the wild sweep of his hair.

"I can do that," he said.

"Good," Brienne replied. She dipped into a stiff bow, and held out her leather-gloved hand. "Come."


	13. Brienne/Tormund VI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Sorry._

Attempt One

Tormund's room was smaller than hers, and darker, with only one window, no candles lit, and no maids hurrying about, rushing to make sure she was comfortable, wondering if she wanted them to pour her a bath.

He closed the door behind him, slid the bolt into place. Leaned against it, red-faced as though they'd raced there. Stared at her as she stood at the foot of his bed, her hands on the clasp of her belt.

They were alone.

"I want to make things very clear," Brienne said.  She pulled Oathkeeper free and set it on the low table. For some reason, her hands were shaking. "I am not looking for a husband," she told him. "I am looking for a child and heir to Tarth. You are--" She hesitated, chewed her tongue, watched as Tormund unpinned the bits of bone that held the furs in place about his neck. "--will be, a contributor, but not my husband. The child will be of Tarth, not of the North."

"I'd father a thousand bastard children if they had a mother like you," he said, and Brienne took an unsteady step back toward the bed.

"I would prefer not to use that word," Brienne said. "They-- _it--_ will be my child. My heir. Not a bastard."

"Wasn't an insult," Tormund said. The fur fell to the floor, and he unclasped his coat. He flung that off as well, leaving a loose undercoat of deer hide, his own pale skin, freckled across the shoulders, forearms peering through. "Vows don't make strong sons. Blood does that."

Then the deer hide was gone, too, and he stood there in his boots and breeches, the erection she'd met at the hot pools straining at the laces.

"You ever birth a babe before?" he asked her, and she raised her eyebrows, pursed her lips, hoping that was signal enough that she was done with his questions.

That smile was back, though. _No chance._

"No," she said.

"You have the hips for it," he said. "And the tits. Gods--"

Brienne looked down at said tits, still covered, small and modest beneath the blue linen of her tunic. What did he see there--something she didn't? Pod had been appreciative enough, but she could hear him these days quite clearly through the adjoining door; she had never heard him call her beautiful as often as he told Sansa that she was a sprite, a vision, the Maiden made flesh. How did he know those words? Who had taught him? And whoever it was, would they be able to teach Tormund?

"I could bounce pebbles off that backside," Tormund was continuing, his face nearly as red as his hair. But he didn't seem embarrassed, or ashamed. Only…eager. Like a young dog confused by urges, so taken by the need to reproduce that he might start humping her leg.

She hoped he had better aim than that.

"Was it difficult for your wife?" Brienne asked.

Tormund frowned, his eyebrows knitting together, his pale brow wrinkling. "Fucking?"

"Birthing."

"Oh," he said. "Cunt of Valyrian steel. Had her the next day."

He was clearly lying. For that, at least, she was grateful.

Brienne took another step back, and found herself sitting on the edge of his featherbed. He'd shucked all the furs and blankets off onto the floor ("Too fucking hot," he explained, then, grinning, "too hot for fucking") and the feathers had been massaged to one end. She felt them pile high beneath her backside, so it felt, oddly, that she was seated on a small, soft hill.

Her fingers fumbled with her laces. She had the knot untied when she looked up to find Tormund already completely naked, still obviously eager, and pink-tipped from ears to cheeks to cock to toes.

"Ever since I saw you walk into Castle Black," he growled. He kneeled at her feet, pulled off each of her boots in turn, with none of the gentleness which Pod had used, none of the calm manipulating of the tendons between her toes. "Ever since, I thought to myself: I need to steal that woman."

"I am not a sheep to be stolen," Brienne said, yanking her foot away, leaving the second boot in his hand.

He threw it over his shoulder. "Figured that out soon enough," he admitted. He took the cuffs of her breeches now, tugged them down, while Brienne hurriedly fumbled with the still-tight laces. She loosed them just enough for her breeches to slide off, down to her knees, then with an extra tug, to the floor.

This is when Pod would have swept his hands up her inner thighs. Pushed them apart, slid his nimble fingers across the nub at the crest of her woman's place.

Tormund nearly took Oathkeeper to her smallclothes until she yelped at him to stop, and he only blushed redder. She undid the bows neatly, and those went to the floor, too.

There were no words now. She had finally shut him up, Tormund Giantsbane. The man who said he wouldn't kneel was between her legs, looking as though he'd just seen a color he didn't know existed ( _Red,_ Brienne thought. _Pink. Yellow. Cerulean blue. These colors don't exist in the North)._

"I have duties I need to fulfill," Brienne reminded him. "Lady Sansa gave me leave for the morning, but she'll be expect--"

She stopped, because the wind was knocked out of her. Tormund was on top of her, weighing her down, his face buried in her hair, breathing in deeply like she was made of perfume and spice and fermented mare's milk.

She didn't think she'd like this, him on top of her. Pod was so light she could have him toppling from the bed with a gentle push of her knee. From experience, she didn't think she'd like this at all. Pod was technique, flattery, pretty words that made her head want to fly apart. Tormund was…not any of those things, and none of the things she knew she liked.

Tormund was pressure, a near-feeling of suffocation, his strong, pale shoulder at her throat, his hand and face in her hair, his other hand reaching down to find her…

Wet?

He growled to feel the slickness of her cunt, and fumbled between them, guiding himself into place.

"Been hard since the day I saw you, woman," he rasped into her ear, and she gave a little strangled sound, half-protest, half-admiration.

She rucked up her tunic, and he slid in with a cry that sounded like a sob of relief.

"Oh gods," he was saying, while Brienne tried to keep her focus, tried to remind herself that this had purpose, duty, was not meant to be enjoyed--

"Oh gods," Tormund growled, and stilled. Shuddered.

Collapsed on top of her.

"Oh," Brienne said.

" _Oh_ ," Tormund sighed.

"That was--"

"You southerners and your efficiency." He kissed her wetly on the cheek, and hoisted himself off of her. "Until tomorrow," he told her, and before she could reply, he was in his furs and out the door, his cheerful whistle trailing after him down the hall.

"Not quite what I meant," Brienne said weakly, and she collapsed back onto Tormund's featherbed with a sigh.


	14. Brienne/Tormund VII

Attempt Four

 

Brienne was sweating. And angry, and perhaps bleeding in her mouth from biting on her lip so hard.

She and Tormund were alone in the training yard with swords so dull they were good for little except practice sparring and as very large butter knives. "We can't afford to lose good men to squabbles over money and women," the king had told them, when presenting them with their weapons the week before. "Anyone who draws blood will be on latrines for a sennight. Understood?"

Brienne understood, but she didn't like it. She didn't know if she was imagining it, but she certainly felt that the swing was slower through the air, dragged back by the blunt edge. The sound wasn't as satisfying, the clash of metal with a blocked blow not as sharp.

"You're not trying," Brienne grunted at Tormund, blocking one of his ineffectual thrusts with his broadsword. "Don't go easy on me."

"Easy?" Tormund halted, and drove the blunt point of his sword between the paving slabs, letting it stick and quiver. "You want to lose."

Brienne lowered her own sword. "I want no such thing."

"'Course you do." He took a step forward, level with his blade, only inches away from her. She could smell the salt of him. There was mud on his face, rubbed into the freckles on his cheekbones. His roughspun shirt hung about him, loose at the neck, more freckles dotting his collarbone, the muscle below. "You pretend you're some knight," he said, "all blood and glory and battle. You're a lady, though, aren't you? Want to be rescued by your pretty southern lord who'll sweep you over his shoulder, take you home and put his babes in you."

He gave her sword a push. It clattered from her hand and to the ground. She let it stay where it landed.

"No," she replied. Her fists fell to her sides, clenched so hard they were shaking.

"That's all you can say--no?" He gave her sword a kick, and it flew several feet across the yard. "Prove it, then." He shoved her shoulders, hard enough to make her take a faltering step back toward the stables. "No weapons, only hands. Prove it to me."

"I--"

But he was already on her, head beneath her armpit, arm around her waist. He sent her hurtling backwards across the yard, nearly into a kitchen maid hauling a pot of boiled water. Brienne's feet were inches off the ground. Flying.

She fell on her back somewhere near the stable yard, a thin layer of straw the only thing keeping her from winding herself on the cobbles, her heart a rapid hammer-strike against her ribs.

Tormund dove for her. She spun out from beneath him and let him lurch, stumble, flew on him from behind and careened with him onto the ground. Straw went flying as his limbs flailed, but she pinned his back beneath her knee and his arms with her hands, out to his sides like wings. Her breath came in rapid, short bursts, her insides tight and lurching.

She bent forward, whispered into his ear: "I win."

He growled: "Not yet."

Then she was flying again. In the air with a grunt and a groan, head hanging, heavy, as all the blood rushed to her brain, ears, forehead. Her feet dangled, her middle cut in half by Tormund's shoulder.

She bobbed along for a few moments, trying to regain her thoughts and her breath, and took him down again in the entryway to the stables. Her head banged on a stable door; Tormund stuck himself on a loose bolt. He was bleeding and she was seeing stars, and a moment later, he had her pinned against a wall in an empty stall, a knee at her cunt, his hands at her sides, stroking her breasts through the fabric of her tunic.

He propped her up, higher, until even her toes left the ground. Wrapped her legs around his hips. Behind him, a stableboy rushed past, jumped at the sight of them, and quietly closed the stall door.

"Told you that you wanted to lose," Tormund growled, his breath hot on her ear.

All it took was a shift of weight and a bending of his head to her breast, and he was back on the hay, and she was on top of him, and he was hard between her legs.

She fumbled with his laces, head hot, brain emboldened. Pushed down his breeches, pushed him back down into the bed of straw as he tried to undo hers. She was quicker with her own, shoving them down her legs with one hand as she kept him pressed to the ground with the other, all her weight centered on his chest. Flung them from one ankle, then the other.

She wouldn't admit it to him, but she had come looking for a fight. She'd woken that morning with an ache between her legs and the sound of moaning from Sansa's room, and had decided that there had to be more to it than this. That Tormund knew what he was denying her. That this was some method of torture that she was no longer going to endure.

Her cunt ached. She wanted him. She didn't know why. Her body knew well enough that her own fingers knew her better than his cock did...but still, she was slick as she moved over him, and guided him into place, hovering inches above his belly, her thighs burning.

"If you do it again I will cut you," she spat at him.

He looked up at her from the pile of hay, his face as red as his beard, his teeth gleaming, a gash on his forehead running a scarlet river to his ear.

He thrust his hips up until he just edged his tip inside of her.

"Can't make promises." The grin widened. "I'm a man in my youth. And with a woman like you--"

She ground down on him almost violently, pinning his shoulders to the ground with her hands. He gasped and gripped her thighs with his rough fingers, pulling her forward, but she refused, stayed stubbornly in place, her muscles as hard as the expression on her face.

"Don't. Move." She took a deep breath and, achingly slowly, lifted herself off of him, feeling a strange thrill of power, of control.

Dipped against him again.

And again. (Tormund groaned.) And again. (Brienne moaned.) And again. (She could feel her cunt walls tighten.) The slow, subtle swings of her hips--inexperienced, her having only tried this once with Pod, having not really fancied the reminder that she was twice his size and could easily crush him when she was on top--becoming more emboldened, more demanding. He opened his mouth as if to say something and she placed her hand over his lips. He sucked a finger between his teeth and his tongue ran hot spirals around her nail. His other hand slid between them, his finger expertly, surprisingly, knowing right where to find the nub he had pretended to doubt the existence of the three times they'd done this before.

He bit her finger, so hard he must have drawn blood, and the shock of pain made Brienne thrust against him so forcefully she thought she might break him against the floor. She almost wanted to. To see him shatter, come apart. But it was satisfying to hear him groan a groan that made her vibrate, so satisfying that she ground down hard enough to make him make that sound all over again.

He spat out her finger, bit at the web of her thumb. His other hand dug nails into the flesh of her backside. But she could barely feel his touch on the rest of her. Her focus had narrowed until it was only him, hard and ridged and driving against her, filling her tightening cunt. It was almost like she was in two places at once, in that growing pressure inside of her, in the walls around him narrowing, constricting; at the same time, she could almost see herself, riding him like a queen leading her forces into battle. The thrill of a silver between her legs. The all-consuming rhythm of countless forces, galloping off to victory.

The triumphant arch of her back, white breasts bared, the war cry as she flung back her head and roared until the dust drifted down and the war was simultaneously beginning and won. As Tormund bucked beneath her, just in time, and exactly as she had commanded.

This time, he was the one who watched as she dressed. He was the one who lay stark naked on the pile of hay as she drew up her breeches and shook straw out of her tunic. He looked dazed as he tried to catch his breath, like he didn't know what to say, or that he had forgotten how to speak completely.

She was just about to leave when he spat it out, the words as ragged as his breathing: "I fucked a bear once."

"Did you," Brienne said dryly, her hand on the lock of the stable door.

Tormund groaned and moved his legs as if testing that they still functioned. "Wasn't nearly as fierce as you."

She gave his breeches a kick in his direction, and left before he could see her start to smile.


	15. Brienne & Pod I

"Waxing," Brienne murmured to herself, leaning out the window of her room and focusing on the pregnant piece of pale moon that hung above the distant hillside. "It's waxing."

There was a hesitant knock on her door, and before she could even answer, it creaked open, groaning. Pod's voice joined it at a higher pitch: "M'lady?"

"Good morning, Pod," Brienne said distractedly between counting days on her fingers, trying to keep track of it in her head. The moon stared back at her, unmoving, unafraid, seeming to grow rounder before her eyes.

"I was wondering if I could speak to you, m'lady."

Brienne didn't answer, still counting. Running short of fingers.

"M'lady?"

Brienne turned on her heels, her shoulders tense, her voice impatient: " _What_?"

Pod shrank back toward the door, and for the hundredth time, Brienne wondered why his confidence was only strong when his cock was hard in his breeches.

"I thought you might want to know that Giantsbane is leaving for the Gift with the other wildlings at midday," he told her, meekly, as though he expected to be punished for it.

"Good," Brienne said. She wouldn't have to tell him, then. She didn't want to imagine his reaction, or if he would seem pleased, or proud. She had told him he would have no part in this at all, and had had mixed feelings on learning that the king would be sending him north to supervise the wildling camp. Now, she was only relieved. No Tormund to come knocking at her chamber door in the wee hours of the morning, piss-drunk. No trying to tease his way into her breeches during training. She couldn't stomach the thought. Even Pod standing in her room, just feet away from her bed, was doing nothing to stir the longings she had once felt in his presence. Even the thought of Jaime beneath her blankets made her feel a bit sick. _Is this a sign? It must be a sign._

"Good," Brienne repeated. She said nothing else, hoping Pod would take his leave, but he only stayed in her doorway, letting in a draft, and fiddled with the buckle of his belt. "What else, Pod?"

"It's only…" Pod hesitated, fiddling harder. "You know I’m not very good at lying, m'lady."

"Yes, Pod," Brienne sighed. She sagged back against the windowsill, feeling tired, and heavy on her feet. "I'm aware."

"So it's impressive, really, that we managed not to tell her for so long."

Unease jolted through her. "What is it?" she asked.

"On your part, of course, m'lady, but on my own as well." Pod was pink about the cheeks, and the ears, enough shame overtaking him to make up for those nights he was utterly shameless, back on the road from Riverrun, or in the room next door when Brienne could hear him groaning in a voice so unlike his own, telling her lady in obscenely clear terms what nasty things he was wanting to do to her.

"Say it, Pod," Brienne said.

"Sandor Clegane. The Hound. The one you killed in the Vale?"

"I remember."

"That is..." The words rushed out of him so fast, and on a whisper so fragile, that Brienne nearly didn't understand him. "…the man who Sansa pretends I am in the bedchamber at night."

"Pardon?"

"When we have sex," Pod breathed.

Brienne turned, doubled over the windowsill, and sighed deeply into the cup of her hands. Rubbed at her eyes. Peered blearily up at Pod, who was standing over her now, looking simultaneously like he wanted to help her and very much like would like to leave and never come back.

"You told me they were friends," she groaned.

"Yes," Pod admitted. "Of a sort. I didn't realize--"

"And I've killed him." Everything seemed heavy now, even the moon outside as it faded into the daylight; it was sagging in the sky, lower than it was before, ready to sink into the horizon.

"Should I tell her, m'lady?"

The stone was rough beneath her hands, rubbing her knuckles raw. Her mind was somewhere else, among those nights she had trouble sleeping for the noise in the next room, of the brighter look to Sansa's eyes, the distant, broken strains of song she could hear in a hum through their adjoining door in the afternoons, when her Lady sat with her sewing. She had a lovely voice, and Brienne could never think of having heard it before. Did the girl love him, then, the Hound? Or was it just some lust, some fancy? She didn't think anyone could look upon that face and think him handsome, or regard his manner and count him honorable. Was the girl a poor judge of character, or did she know something that Brienne did not? ( _Did I not think Jaime a traitor when I met him?_   _What did the Kingslayer become to me when I learned the truth? And what did he think of me?_ )

"No," Brienne said, and Pod, too, sagged, relieved. "It is my duty to protect her, body and soul. Perhaps the time will come eventually. But it isn't now."

"Yes, m'lady," Pod said. "I understand. It's only…I don't know how much longer I can hold back."

"You could visit her less often."

"That is not a kind demand, m'lady."

Brienne was grateful for her lack of lust, but couldn't help but smart; he had not been so reluctant to leave _her_ bed.

"You will have to hold your tongue for now," she said gruffly. "I am sure you can find other uses for it."

"Yes, m'lady." He turned to go, walking at an agonizingly slow pace, and just when she thought she was rid of him, he turned once more to squint at her from the doorway. "Is there something different about you, m'lady? A change of hair, or your tunic--"

"No, Pod."

"Are you well?"

"I'm with child, Podrick," she snapped, then felt her own face blushing. It had been so odd to even _think_ it, so much so that she hadn't yet, not properly, but here she was, saying it aloud. To her squire.

Who had imagined she would tell the news, first? No one, she supposed--she never thought she _would_ be with child, or at least she hadn't for so many years of her life. It was only recently that she had dared to think it. Dream it. Dream of the words she might tell him, the good news.  _Jaime. I wanted to tell Jaime_.

"You don't look it, m'lady," Pod remarked, frowning squarely at her middle.

"Go away, Pod."

Pod obeyed, and Brienne watched the moon fall as she leaned back over the windowsill, feeling the stone cold and solid beneath her arms, the bite of the air on her face, the strange, wistful stirrings within her that were not lust, but something pure, something that lingered even when the want of a body, any body, had left her.

The moon vanished into the light blue of morning, the day growing instantly warmer. And she thought, that stirring growing larger, hungrier, hotter and consuming: _Next time, I pray to the gods that it_ will _be Jaime._


	16. Brienne/Jaime II

The fire was dying, the rocks sizzling as it drowned beneath the sudden onslaught of a wet night. Brienne and Jaime sat together beneath a beech tree, and watched as the rain come down.

"The farmers will be grateful," Jaime said. His head lolled against the bark; Brienne wasn't looking at him, but she could feel him watching her. "I can't remember the last time it rained."

"It will slow us down."

"And perhaps fewer people will starve." He reached to scratch as his right hand, sighed as he remembered it wasn't there. "Besides," he said, "I will have even longer to enjoy your company."

Weeks before, Brienne would have snapped at that, told him to shut up, to stop provoking her. This time, she said nothing, because she wasn't sure he didn't mean it.

"Are you not looking forward to seeing your sister again?" she asked. Her throat was dry. "Your children."

There was a splattered silence; a fat, cold drop rolled down Brienne's neck.

"You remember," Jaime said.

"Yes," she replied. "I remember."

"I trust you will keep my confession to yourself."

"You have my word."

"A valuable thing."

There was another silence, another idle scratching at the ghost of his sword hand.

"Cersei, yes," he said, "of course. My children…." He shifted, as though impatient. For some reason, Brienne found herself reaching over to help him sit up, pulling him so he didn't put pressure on the raw stump of his arm; for some reason, Jaime let her. "They were never truly my children," he said, and settled back against the tree.

"I thought--"

"I was never their father. In some ways it eases me, to think I can take little responsibility, for Joffrey…" He coughed, and Brienne handed him her open flask without his asking. "On the other hand" --he half-laughed, half-scoffed, lifting his stump from the ground-- "perhaps my absence bears its own responsibility."

"You were kingsguard," Brienne replied, without the usual venom she usually held when she said that word.

"Yes," he said. "The Warrior, never the Father." He took another drink, and handed back her flask. She took her own sip before sliding it back onto her belt. "You, Brienne," Jaime said, "you're the Warrior, and the Maiden. Can you imagine yourself as the Mother?"

She didn't answer his question. "Never the Father--you said you were there when they were born."

"Yes, I was there, and where have I been since?"

"Protecting their lives as a soldier."

"Not much of a soldier without my sword hand."

"Maybe the king will release you."

"Maybe the king will take my other hand out of spite." He sighed, and groped at her hip once more for the flask. She let him. "If he does release me--what is there for me? A wife? A family?"

"You wouldn't want those things?"

"No more than you would want a husband, or babes suckling at your breast." There was something strange about his voice, something tight and tense about it; she wanted to look at his face, to see if he looked like he regretted the words as much as it sounded he did.

She didn't dare. "Perhaps you'll change your mind," she said.

His reply held no teasing, no taunting. His tone was sincere as he slipped the flask back into her folded hands. "Perhaps," he said. "And perhaps someday you'll change yours."


	17. Brienne/Plot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Friend and foe arrive at Winterfell, much to everyone's discomfort.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Making assumptions of Season 7, here. Forgive my forwardness. Also, this is where we earn the angst tag, but don't worry--happier times ahead._

On the first day of Brienne's fifth missed moonblood, the Brotherhood without Banners arrived at Winterfell.

Brienne woke to arguing, and felt instantly sick. She could hear Sansa's voice through the door: deep and angry and deeply passionate.

"He saved my life! More than I probably know. And with Brienne indisposed--"

"The Lannister dog--" she heard Jon Snow interrupt.

"He left them. And he would have taken me with him if I'd said yes."

"And raped you along the way."

"He never would have! He's more honorable than any true knight I've known, and stronger, too."

"He's lame."

"And your men _still_ can't hold him."

There was the loudest sigh Brienne had ever heard. She could imagine the king closing his eyes and rubbing scarred hands along his face.

"He'll stay in the winter town until we can gauge his leanings," Jon said.

"Fine," Sansa agreed, but she didn't sound happy about it. "And once he proves himself, he can take over for Brienne before she goes to her birthing bed."

"The Hound, your sworn shield," Jon groaned.

"A wildling, at your council," Sansa snapped back. "We've all found strange allies in this war."

There was silence after that, and the drift and click of Sansa's door opening, followed by a quieter turn of the knob to Brienne's room. Brienne swept the covers aside, and got to her feet, feeling inadequately dressed to meet her lady.

Sansa entered, her face quite pink, her eyes alive with fire and…an expression Brienne had never seen there. What was it? Happiness? Hope?

"Did you hear?" she asked Brienne quietly.

"Yes," Brienne answered. "Sandor Clegane has arrived at Winterfell."

Sansa was gripping the fabric of her dress quite tightly in her hands. "And he will be my sworn shield once you are indisposed. "

"I am glad you have found a replacement, my lady," Brienne said. "It's only…."

"What?" Sansa urged her.

Brienne hesitated, then said, "Nothing, my lady." Confusion turned, kicked up mud in her murky mind. _It's only,_ my lady, she thought grimly, _I thought I'd been the one to kill him._

**

It was curiosity that took her to the winter town, and the need to be out of the stink of Winterfell. It was starting to turn her stomach, and make her shiver, shudder, to walk past the training yard, the godswood, and think that Tormund wasn't there.

 _The Hound is back,_ she thought to herself when Pod wasn't there to remind her, to worry out loud when he might be kicked from Lady Sansa's bed. _The man I killed. The Lannister dog. But what of another Lannister?_

She'd worried about Jaime since the first raven arrived from the smoking ruin of King's Landing. Her fear had echoed in her head every step she took through the castle, in the voices of squires, of handmaids, of soldiers and stable hands. _The queen is dead, the queen is dead._ Murmurs swelling and swirling and threatening to overcome her. _The queen is dead, the queen is dead. Kingslayer is Queenslayer. His own sister, dead._

"Any word of Ser Jaime?" Brienne had asked Lady Sansa as soon as she could, when she was sure they were both alone. Her mouth was dry--she had partaken neither of food nor water all day, unable to stomach the thought of either.

"No," Sansa had replied, the scroll rolling in her delicate hands. "Nothing. I'm sorry. Shall I tell you if I find out?"

Brienne had hesitated to give an answer, then, speechless, had nodded, and fled the room before the strange tears that had come hand-in-hand with her pregnancy threatened to overcome her once more.

Those same tears were threatening now, as she ducked through the low door of the Smoking Log. She ordered weak ale and found an empty table, intent on gathering her thoughts, collecting her emotions before she was due to be back at Sansa's side that night.

It was only minutes before a large shape slid into a chair across from her.

"Bitch," a deep voice rasped.

"Hound," she replied. She took a sip of her cider, but found little stomach for it. "My lady informed me that you had arrived in Winterfell. I bid you welcome."

"Your lady?" Sandor Clegane said. Some odd expression alighted in his hateful eyes. "Sansa?"

"Lady Stark, yes," Brienne replied. "I am her sworn shield."

"Damn good job of it you're doing out here, then," the Hound replied. He looked over his shoulder, shifted in the bench, looking uncomfortable. He was just as ugly as she remembered, with those scars marring half his face, though his hair was longer, his beard having grown to the point of curling. He was not in armor; the roughspun cloth he wore beneath his cloak looked uncomfortable, itchy, and beneath his rank. "I suppose that means I'm not meant to kill you," he grumbled.

"I would thank you for not considering it," she said.

"Already considered it," he replied. He rubbed foam from his beard with his finger. "Where's Arya?" he demanded.

Brienne jumped, a tiny fluttering kicking up in her belly. "I don't know," she admitted. "After hearing…I hoped she might have stayed with you."

"She robbed me and left me to die," the Hound growled. "A kindness in some way, but not one I'm sure I'd thank her for. I thought you might've come across her."

"No," Brienne said. "I hadn't."

"Damn." The Hound took a long drink of his ale. Wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "How is your lady, then?" The words sounded gravelly, painful to speak.

"Alive," Brienne replied.

"Should've taken her sooner," the Hound muttered. "Far away from King's Landing." He looked up at Brienne with a conviction that was unsettling; his eyes had the most disquieting intensity, a strange kind of fury. _What does Lady Sansa see in you?_ "I want to see her."

"No," Brienne replied. "Not until they call you."

"Then pass a message for me."

Brienne said nothing, waiting for him to tell her what that message would be, but he didn't. He only climbed to his feet, a bit unsteadily and quite suddenly, and pushed through the throng to the door.

"Ser--" Brienne began to call after him, but he was already gone. It was only a matter of seconds before she spotted the reason why.

Her stomach began to twist, to dance at the same time. _Not my stomach,_ she reminded herself, _the babe,_ but she couldn't dare think of it, not with him here, not with the promise of another close behind--

"Lady Brienne of Tarth," Ser Bronn of Blackwater said, taking the Hound's vacated seat, a lute clutched in his boney hands. "By the gods, I suppose we should have expected to see your face here. You're looking well. Still blonde. He'll like that."

"Is he here?" Brienne found herself saying, as she clutched her tankard so hard that the handle was cutting off feeling to her fingers. "Is he well?"

Bronn strummed a set of discordant notes on the lute, as though he meant to play her a song. She wished the strings would break.

"The Queenslayer, you mean?" Bronn said with neither hurt nor irony. "Aye, he's here. But well?"

"He's not safe," Brienne said.

"You're telling me. That whore was twice his size--"

"You need to go," Brienne said, shoving back from the table. "You're not welcome here. If the king finds out…"

Bronn was drunk, or not listening, or didn't care. He strummed another little melody, strange and sad. "What would it take to seduce a lady like you, then? _There once was a lady from Tarth_ …. Fuck me, what rhymes with Tarth?"

"Ser Bronn--"

"And there he is." The lute crashed down on the table, struck another panicked chord, and suddenly Bronn was standing in front of her, as though he meant to block her way. She backed up a step, saw a familiar, tousled head of blond hair behind him, heard the familiar voice, thick with drink:

"I'm afraid I've been relieved of nothing but my coin. You owe me another drink."

Bronn stumbled aside, swept back with a golden hand. Brienne stood frozen, unsure, the babe practicing its parry and thrust in her belly. She placed a hand over the front of her tunic, willing it to still beneath her palm.

"You're not safe," she said, her voice thick with tears.

The alehouse was busy, loud with voices and singing and clanging and laughter. Still, Brienne could hear nothing but the slur of his words, see nothing but the red in his deadened eyes.

Suddenly, the gold hand landed on the table next to Brienne's near-full tankard of ale. Jaime massaged the stump of his arm, scratched at the end. Smiled a smile that worried her.

"I always wanted to die in the arms of the woman I love, didn't I, Bronn?" he said to his companion. "Did I not tell you the gods would reward our travels?"

The babe kicked Brienne swiftly in the ribs, took square aim at her heart. Her eyes felt wet, but her vision was clear. She felt like she was about to cry, but at the same time, was completely devoid of any real feeling. _He's here,_ she thought. _He's alive. He's gone mad._

"Well, Brienne," Jaime growled to her, taking a step forward with one hand and one shortened arm in the air, "here is my chance. Strike me down. By the gods, I won't put up a fight."

She found her voice, though it didn't sound like hers. "Come with me, Ser Jaime," she commanded.

He dipped drunkenly into a florid bow. "To where, Lady Brienne?"

"To the king."

He laughed; the sound of it made her feel even sicker. "Don’t waste your pageantry on me, my lady. As long as the Queenslayer is dead, I am sure your king will find that sufficient punishment for my crimes."

She took him by the collar--she felt only her muscle, now, her bone, her brain disengaged. _He said he loves me,_ her pained heart said, while her sense countered, _he's drunk and wants you to kill him._

"You're right, though, aren't you?" Jaime blathered, as Brienne began to push him toward the entrance, knights and smallfolk once more visible, an obstacle, too late and drunk and blinded by lust to dodge out of their way. "Has your king his own children, yet? That might afford me the great honor of becoming Princeslayer, too, or"--the word slurred--"Princess-slayer. Another name to add to my section in the kingsguard book-- _Ser Jaime Lannister, Kingslayer, Queenslayer, et cetera_."

"Quiet," Brienne commanded. She ducked his head down beneath the lintel. Pushed him through, his skin fevered and slick with sweat beneath her hand.

"I'll stay here, then," Bronn called after, and the door swung shut behind them.


	18. Brienne/Jaime III

It was embarrassingly easy to sneak Jaime Lannister in through the East Gate.  There was only a green lad and a drunk watchman on guard, and when the boy called out, his voice cracking, "Lady Brienne, who is that with you?" she only had to reply with, "I've taken a lover for the night," before the hinges began to groan, and the streets of Winterfell were empty and bare before them.

"I thought you were taking me to the king," Jaime whispered to her, too loud, and she yanked on his wrist and pulled him through. "And a lover?" he remarked, stumbling as she pulled him on. The word almost hurt Brienne, but she had had the same reaction when the gate parted so readily before them. At a different time, with different men, they would have laughed at her if she suggested that she was taking a lover; now, it went without question. _What would Jaime say if he knew?_ He bumped against her as she urged him on, his back against the slight bulge of her belly. _If he stays long, he will find out soon enough._

"I'm confused," Jaime babbled, and the spite, the hair, the general smell, reminded her so much of the Kingslayer she had known only as her prisoner so many years ago, before the bear pit, before he lost his hand. Only this time, he was drunk and loud and desperate to die. "You told me to _leave_ Winterfell because he'd have my head," he continued, "and now you are taking me right to him. So perhaps you have attached your loyalty to yet another king…what is he, another spoke on your wheel of honor?"

" _Quiet_ , Queenslayer."

That shut him up, though Brienne was sorry for it. His head hung as she pushed him through the side door of the keep, and he was biddable as she led him up the spiraling stairs, up and up past silent chambers, empty open doors, to her empty room.

"You serve a bed, now," Jaime said thickly, his wit losing him and his voice subdued. "I see no king here."

"Undress," Brienne whispered. She locked her chamber door, and hoped that Sansa had found comfort in Pod's arms somewhere else this evening.

"Rather forward--" Jaime began.

"You stink," she hissed back. "And if you are to sleep in my bed, I'd rather have you clean off your whore."

"But the king," Jaime said, a last plea, with a strange sort of wetness in his eyes. He was speckled with shadow, dark circles beneath his eyes. His fingers hung loose at his side, his other sleeve empty, and Brienne realized they had left his gold hand at the alehouse. _Safer this way_ , she thought, _without the weapon, and without the glimmer of Lannister gold, dead house or no_.

"I am going to think how best to present you so you won't get yourself killed," she said, still in a low whisper. She took up the basin, put it by the bed with a clean cloth. The water was cold, but it would do.

He finally obeyed, and she watched as he undressed. Ser Jaime's body was no new world to discover; she knew it well enough already, had seen every inch of it more than she originally cared to. There was, however, new topography, an alteration to the landscape: an angry, shining valley of a burn scar that ran from the point of his shoulder to the base of his neck; a livid scab at his knee that looked like it had been picked at more than once.

He met her eyes as he scrubbed beneath his underarms, rubbed at a stain on his shoulder, swept the cloth between his legs and beneath his balls. His posture was straight, his legs apart, his skin pale and flickering in the lamp light.

"You're not shy," he said.

"Should I be?" she replied. She could feel the color rising to her face, but hoped he couldn't see it. The drunken slur and despondency were draining from his voice. Now, he sounded only tired.

"I seem to remember a blushing maid at Harrenhall," he said. He slipped the rag back into the basin. "She cringed away from me in the baths and wanted nothing to do with me."

"Brienne the Maid is dead." She held out a dry cloth. He took it, his fingers brushing hers.

"Is that so?" There was something in the eyes, behind the weariness, something catching there, sparking. _If you truly wanted to be dead_ , Brienne thought _, you wouldn't be here now_.

"And who are you, then?" he asked. His voice was intimate, a deep whisper that matched her own. "Who is standing here in this room with me?"

"Brienne," she replied. "Only Brienne."

She watched unabashed as he dried between his legs, tried in vain to reach his back, the tense muscles of his shoulders stretching. Ran the cloth across the back of his neck.

"And I am Jaime," he said, almost to himself, as he handed the towel back to her.

They stood there, still, feet apart, the towel clenched to Brienne's front, and she tried not to think about what might happen to him come morning.


	19. Brienne & Sansa II

"My lady, I realize it's early, and I'm so sorry to wake you, I just wanted to make sure it was before your handmaid arrived, and--"

Sansa rolled over in her bed, taking most of her covers with her. She was not asleep, and didn't seem to have been sleeping for quite some time. She smirked as she pushed herself up in her bed, pulled the furs down.

"Who do you have in your room?" Sansa asked lightly, teasing her. "I recognize his voice. Only I can't place him."

"Lady Sansa--"

"A southerner, with a very pleasing accent," she wondered to herself. "One of the Knights of the Vale? Only why would I know…"

She trailed off, chewing on the corner of her pretty lip, and understanding kindled in her eyes.

"Jaime Lannister," she whispered.

"Please, my lady--"

"What is he doing here?" She flung the rest of the covers aside, flew from her bed, pulled a robe over her gown, as if any moment, Jaime might wriggle from his bindings and break the door down. " _You brought him into Winterfell_?"

"He is not well," Brienne replied. "I was afraid he was going to do himself an injury, my lady. Or worse."

"And what do you think my brother will do when he finds him here?" Sansa hissed, and for the first time in months, Brienne felt half her actual size. "After I argued for Sandor Clegane…do you think he will bend to my wishes twice in so little time?"

"I only thought…" Brienne said, struggling for reason, realizing she might have failed to engage it since the moment she found Jaime in the Smoking Log. "…we might advocate for him. Save him from himself. Reason with the king."

"The man's a Lannister!"

"The Lannister who sent me to find you."

"A Lannister regardless."

"As were you, my lady."

Sansa snapped her mouth shut, looked up at Brienne with a new, bright splash of pink flooding her face. She should not have said that. She should not have spoken such words, with such tone. She should be groveling at her lady's feet. Instead, she stood her ground, straightened herself to her full height, and stared down at her charge, unflinching.

Sansa sighed.

"Stay here," she told Brienne, pulling on her other sleeve, and yanking the sash tight. "I'll go find Jon. And please tell me that Ser Jaime's bound."

"I like to think I'm not stupid, my lady."

Sansa looked like she might say something to that, her eyes faltering from Brienne's face to her widened middle, but she composed herself, and flew through the door without a word to the contrary.

 **

They must have painted an odd picture, the three of them standing there in their nightclothes in Sansa's room, in the grey of early morning, the door to Brienne's room hanging open as Ser Jaime Lannister slept gormlessly in her bed.

The king didn't seem to know what to say, and Lady Sansa wasn't prompting him. Brienne only leaned against the doorframe, breathing in through her nose, watching Jaime's shadow in the dark. Just like she had the entire night through.

He'd fallen asleep so easily, like he hadn't closed his eyes in months. She'd offered him the bed and he hadn't refused, and had been so tired that he didn't take the clothes she had offered him, just crawled between her blankets, still naked, and was asleep within a minute. After some hesitance, and a despondent glance at the bedroll she knew her back would refuse, Brienne crawled in beside him, turned on her side to face him ( _If I lay on my other I'll be sick_ ), and stared at him in the dark, willing him to open his eyes and look back at her.

 _Tell me you're okay_ , she thought. _Tell me this is just drunkenness. Tell me you'll be well in the morning. Tell me you've come all this way because you couldn't bear to be kept from my side_.

But he only slept, and of course, never replied.

Brienne woke several times in the night, twice startled to find a strange man who wasn't Pod in her bed. It took several moments for her heart to calm and for the babe's movement to stop adding to her discomfort, and for her to remember in a haze of hope and despair: _He's here_.

Jon Snow was watching her now as she stood there, his dark eyes so baleful it was as though he was trying to make her confess, though she had nothing left she would admit out loud.

"No," he said, and Brienne felt her fists tighten at her sides. His voice was firm and without care for the sleeping man, but so had been Sansa's when she explained to her half-brother who was here, and why. Still, despite the conversation, Jaime did not wake, and it was only a faint sigh of sleep that calmed Brienne's panic that he might have died in the night.

"What will the other houses think?" the king said, obviously wanting no reply.

Sansa answered anyway. "They'll think we'll be setting our petty loyalties aside in order to recruit some of the best soldiers in Westeros to fight against the Others."

"Our brother died for so-called petty loyalties--"

Sansa drew her sash tighter, cinching in her waist. "And people are dying every day, out of loyalty to _you._ "

"Sansa--"

"Fine." Her head was high, her voice taking on that deep, otherworldly quality that made Brienne feel uneasy, as though out of everyone in Winterfell, Sansa would be the only one who could take her down in a fight. "If not for me, then do it for Brienne. Say it was a favor to my sworn shield, to spare the life of her husband."

"Husband?" Brienne and Jon Snow both said in unison.

The color was rising on Sansa's cheeks, matching the shade of her hair. "Didn't you say yourself that you'd moved to recognize wilding marriages south of the wall?"

"Yes," the king admitted, "but--"

"Lady Brienne took Ser Jaime as prisoner and transported him to King's Landing--and assures me that he fought her the entire way. Despite recent…developments…doesn't that sound like a wildling marriage to you?"

"Did he consent to this?" Jon asked.

"I didn't realize that was necessary," Sansa replied.

"My lady--" Brienne cut in, but the king didn't let her finish.

"I'm not a fool," Snow said, "and I will not be taken for one."

"House Lannister is dead," Sansa hissed. "He has nothing to fight for, not against us."

"I beg your mercy, Your Grace," Brienne said. She was on one knee before him now, feeling large and foolish, more cumbersome than ever.

"She's in love with him, Jon," Sansa murmured to the king above her head, while Brienne fixed her eyes on the floor. "Do you recall what that is, 'love?'"

Brienne looked up at them, watched the look that passed between brother and sister. The king seemed to change in that moment, and instead of a man in night clothes, a wolf fur draped around his neck, Brienne could only think of the Jon Snow she'd never met but had heard so much about: a boy in black--humorless, merciful, and ever keen to please.

Jon Snow's voice was begrudging. "He'll be our prisoner, not our guest."

"All I wish for, your grace," Brienne said, her knee protesting beneath her, "is for you to spare his life, no matter what he asks."

"He isn't well," Sansa whispered in agreement.

Jon stared at Ser Jaime through the open door, his dark eyes black with shadow.

"I fear for the wits of your Hound," Jon grumbled to Sansa, and he drew up his wolf fur and left them.

Sansa helped Brienne climb back to her feet, and they stood side-by-side in the doorway, watching the shadows clear, divide, grow beneath the bed, beneath the covers, beneath Jaime Lannister, who still lay, breathing, naked, _alive_ , between Brienne's covers.

"And I trust you will not make a fool of me," Sansa murmured, "nor a liar."

"My lady?" Brienne replied.

"Make him your husband, for both of your sakes," Sansa commanded. She was retreating back into her own chambers, loosening her belt, shrugging from her robe to retreat back to her bed and doubtless dream of her ugly Hound. "One of us must get what we want," she said, "and I think Jon would much rather it be you."


	20. Brienne/Jaime IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Confession: I had 499 kudos, so I clicked my own heart button. I'll try and write more chapters before I go blind._
> 
>  
> 
> _Also, THANK YOU for all your amazing comments and kudos. I honestly can say that I'm not very sure I deserve them._
> 
>  
> 
> _Now, I think I owe you some relief from The Angst. Not major relief, and we're still starting with Major Angst. Let's just go with a general swell of optimism, with promises of Smut Yet to (excuse me) Come._

The First Visit

 

The first time Brienne saw Jaime, he had been in a cell. Behind bars, stinking and hairy and dirty, but still, somehow, beneath it all, handsome.

She never understood how someone could spend so long in chains and keep his wits about him, or even survive it. Prisoners were infrequent at Evenfall Hall, but every so often she would pass the tower where they were kept, and hear the clanking and the groaning and the wailing through the grates in the wall. Jaime was never that base, never kicked to that point where he became something less than human. Never let himself deteriorate until he was not much more than the bucket of waste in his cell.

He was in better quarters now than he had had at the Stark encampment. It was a room, for one: stripped bare until it had nothing but a bed and a straw mattress, and a pot for pissing in, but a room regardless. The window had shutters to keep out the cold, and one wall, like the rest of the keep, kept warm from the underground hot springs.

She found him crouched against it as she pushed into his room, the rope trailing limply from the bolted-down bed to his ankle.

He looked up when she entered, looked down again, and said nothing.

Brienne's stomach knotted. She set down the pot of broth, kicked the lid onto the piss bucket, and pushed it through the door. The jailer outside, who she had paid off for the privilege of visiting the prisoner (and who was only too eager to do so, having learned the Kingslayer's habit of slaying his jailers) took the bucket, and a door down the corridor banged shut.

They were alone.

"Is there is anything I can bring for you, Ser Jaime?" Brienne asked quietly, spine straight as she stood before him, wishing he would get up from the hard ground. "A pen, a raven. Word from the south."

"Do you have word from the south?" Jaime replied, his voice rough and ragged. "No, I would not want it if you did. What does it matter to me, when everyone I care about is dead?"

She ignored the jab, the way his words slid like a knife against the pulse point of her throat, the windpipe. "Are you comfortable?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, begrudgingly. "It is better than I deserve."

"It is a room," Brienne replied, "not a cell."

"Which rather proves my point," he said darkly. He sent the rope wriggling with his hand. "Why am I not in chains?" he asked.

"Because you're in ropes."

"I could undo a rope."

"With only one hand?"

He made a face that in different circumstances would have made Brienne laugh. Instead, she pulled the cork from the wine with her teeth, and he reached out with a clay cup for her to fill it, then made noises when she only gave him a finger's width.

"Another thing I do not deserve..." Jaime continued, giving his rope another violent swing. _He could strangle me if he wanted to_ , Brienne reminded herself. _But he won't._ "...is having you as my jailer," Jaime finished.

"You wish for someone else," Brienne said, trying to push the hurt out of her voice.

" _No_ ," Jaime replied, almost violently. He was quiet for a long moment as he slipped to the floor, his bare feet sliding out from under him. "It's the only kindness I am grateful for."

He still refused to look at her. She herself was thankful, because if he did look up, he would doubtless see from that angle the part of her that was becoming more difficult to hide, the gentle swell that she was not yet ready to explain.

"I'll be back tonight," she told him. The door down the hall groaned open; the returning jailer was whistling, swinging the tin pail so wide it glanced off the stone walls.

Jaime did not reply. His hair hung limply around his face, and oddly, all Brienne could think was, _Some part of me wishes he would try to kill me, if only so I would know that he's still there._

**

The Fourth Visit

"There's something different about you."

Jaime was on the floor again. She wondered if he slept there, too; there was no impression on the mattress until she sank onto it herself, sitting there with him as she watched him lift the pot of broth to his lips.

She said nothing in reply, only felt her heart start beating hard in her ribs as he looked up at her over the rim of the pot.

"I am older," Brienne replied. The flagon of wine was sweating in her hands.

"It suits you," he replied. He flung the pot aside; he had drained it. It was the first time she had seen him finish his food. She hoped it stuck to him. Filled out his face so he no longer looked wan. Sparked something in his sad eyes.

She looked up from her hands. He was smiling at her.

"Thank you," he said.

She reached to give him the wine. He reached to take it.

"For what?" she asked, settling heavily back into his bed.

His smile faltered, but remained. "For not killing me," he replied.

**

The Sixth Visit

"You once said you did not feel a father to your children. Do you feel their loss as a father would?"

They were side by side on the floor now, Brienne's sword and dagger set outside the door, having brought nothing with her but her clothes and her boots. She would leave those, too, if they asked, if only so she could be here.

"Their absence?" Jaime was no longer tied, but had made no moves to escape. "He doesn' talk t'me," the jailer had told Brienne. "Doesn' taunt me. Doesn't beg. Wants nothin', though it be sometimes I hear him callin' out a name." His eyes were dark, conveying something he would not tell her. "Sometimes yers," he admitted on a whisper.

"No, I don't feel their absence," Jaime said. "I was never there. My hand, however--" He looked down at his shortened limb, and Brienne imagined he was attempting to flex his missing fingers. "I am sorry they are dead," he said finally.

"As am I," Brienne said.

"Are you?" Jaime asked. His hair hung in his face, a too-long strand clinging to a pink scar--a recent one--that puckered the bow of his lip. "Are you sad my sister is dead?"

Brienne plucked at the hem of her tunic. Even unbelted, it was starting to feel tight.

"You must do this on purpose," he remarked. "Stay silent, draw out my secrets." He sighed. "It won't work."

Still she said nothing, and he took another thirsty swallow of the wine.

"I was wrong," he said, and there--there it was. Something Brienne hadn't heard in his voice since he came to Winterfell. _Anger_. "My sister never loved me."

"But--" Brienne began.

"She wanted to _be_ me," Jaime said bitterly. "What did I say, so many times? That Cersei would do anything for her children. I was wrong. It wasn't their safety she wanted. It was their power." He gave a bitter laugh that twisted Brienne's insides. "My own power. She used to dress as me when we were young. Become me for a day. Nothing got me harder than watching her pull on my clothes, pull my tunic down over her teats. _Love_ , I thought to myself. _She wants to be surrounded in the smell of me_. No, Brienne, not love. She wanted my cock, and not just for the pleasure of it. She didn't want a man. She wanted to _be_ a man."

"She wanted to be queen," Brienne said.

"She wanted to be king," Jaime replied. He took another swallow of wine. "And I am very good at killing kings."

Another long silence, another moment where Brienne could barely keep herself from scraping her short fingernails across the itchy skin of her stomach, give her secret away.

"She deserved it," Brienne said, knowing in every way that there was probably no worse thing to say. It wasn't even a question, but a statement. Brienne could smell honor, and she knew that Cersei had had little, if any at all.

"Yes," Jaime said. He handed Brienne the flagon, and she took it to her lips, tasted him there. "She deserved it."

**

The Tenth Visit

 

"I don't understand a man who can take comfort in whores."

They had moved to the bed. Jaime seemed to be sleeping in it now; there was an indent from his weight. Brienne dipped into it as they sat side by side, as she folded into herself, her arms across the slight swell of her belly.

"They take their coin with lies," Jaime said. "That is the worst thing of it. Not their lies. Ours. What satisfaction is there between the thighs of a woman one does not love?"

Again, as it was so often, Brienne did not answer, lost as she was in her own thoughts, her own reservations. She had appreciated Tormund, and had found pleasure in his teasing, his torture, his devotion, and vindication in his babe growing inside her. She did not love him. Similarly, she felt fondness for Pod, but he was a boy, her squire. And… _Pod_.

"You told me Brienne the Maid was dead," Jaime said, as the precise moment that the babe, growing ever-stronger, began to begin fresh assault on her insides. "Have I come to find you already belong in the arms of another?"

"Does it matter?" Brienne replied, very aware of how very close they were, of Jaime's hand sitting on the wool blanket between their thighs.

"You are with child," Jaime said.

"I am not," Brienne replied, color flooding her face.

"Either that or you've taken to extra portions at supper." Jaime gave a disbelieving chuff of laughter; it quickly soured. "Please tell me you were willing."

"You think no man would have me unless I were screaming?"

"I didn't say that."

"Then say it now, as it is obviously what you are thinking."

"It's true, then, the child."

"My father is dying."

"I've heard."

"He's in need of an heir."

"Does the man love you?"

Brienne stared at him, her eyes wide, her breathing hard. He was looking back at her, his eyes clear, his wits returned so fully it almost winded her to look at him.

"You deserve to be loved, Brienne." His voice was low, steady and intimate. She could smell the wine on his breath.

"Do you want me to love you?" he asked. His hand was beneath her chin, a finger brushing the curve of her neck. She held her breath, knowing the sound of it would give her away.

A long nail traced the tendon. "Do you desire me the way you desired the father of your child?" he asked.

She flung his hand away. "Do not tease me, Ser Jaime."

" _Ser_? I would prefer you fling shit at me than _sers_ , my lady."

Brienne's breath trembled as she exhaled. Her face grew hard. "I do not want your pity."

"I wasn't about to give it to you," Jaime replied. His fingers were back, on her hand now, tracing a crease on her palm. She felt her fingers begin to close, a carnivorous plant crushing its pray.

"You're drunk," she said, holding him tight.

"I grieve," he replied. She did not know when he came closer, but the heat of him was all around, surrounding her like high stone walls, until she was boxed in by him: the smell of him, wine and dirt and desperation.

"You offered me comfort," he asked. "Does your offer stand even now?"

His hand drew hers up, up across the swell of her belly, to the even more sensitive, more prominent swell of new breast. His breath puffed across her cheek, her ear, and the vibration of his voice rattled every bit of her down to the bone.


	21. Brienne & Pod II, Sansa/Sandor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Woops. These are kind of turning into chapters._

"Where is Podrick Payne?"

The chambermaid staggered back, terrified, from the doorway of Pod's small room.  Brienne was used to frightening people small in stature and it rarely delighted her;  however, today it gave her some strange thrill of pleasure that she could only account to her near-overwhelming desire to throttle someone.

"H-he's here, m'lady," the girl stuttered. "In his chambers."

Brienne shoved through the open door, saw nothing that looked like Pod among the sparse room of scattered clothes and shucked bedding. It wasn't until she made out that the lump of furs on the bed was moving that she realized the girl was telling the truth.

"What are you doing, Pod?" Brienne asked as the girl took her silent leave and vanished.

"Moping, m'lady," said a small voice beneath the covers.

Brienne held in a sigh. "Lady Sansa," she said.

"She loves another," Pod mumbled.

"I know," said Brienne. "You told me."

Pod groaned and buried himself even further beneath his furs. Brienne sat down beside him, the bed dipping alarmingly beneath her, and tried to regain her patience.  _I should have stayed_ , she thought to herself, so violently that the urge almost had her up on her feet, tearing back down to Jaime's room.  _I should be down there right now, untying my breeches._ Her nethers gave a reminding throb, and her neck felt sticky, as though Jaime's breath still lingered there. She shivered. She could still feel the impression of his hand on her breast, hear his voice ringing in her ear:  _Do you want me to love you_?

"She's a highborn lady," Brienne said, attempting with all her will to keep her voice gentle, and not pulled tight with her own want to weep. "The Lady of Winterfell. I am sure, Pod, that she appreciates your…attentions…but…"

There was a small mumble of discontent from the blankets.

Brienne sighed. "Pod?" she said.

She waited. Finally, the fur and wool parted, and a dark, unkempt head of hair appeared, along with a pair of small, reddened eyes.

"Yes, m'lady," he said miserably.

She dipped her head, pulled the covers back until naked shoulders and back appeared.

"Pod," she said again, quietly, ( _selfishly_ , she thought), "would you like me to ease you?"

"M'lady?"

Brienne's fingers were clumsy as she fumbled to undo her tight belt. She unbuckled it, and flung it to the floor along with ( _bloody useless)_ Oathkeeper. Pulled her snug tunic over her head, struggling at the full, aching breasts and shoulders. Emerged from the hem, sweating, to find Pod kneeling before her, naked, red-eyed and frowning, his cock sitting flaccid upon his thighs.

"M'lady," he said again, understanding.

His hand crept out, hovered in the air an inch away from the stiff peak of her breast. She nearly thrust it forward into his palm.

His face unchanging, he pushed on, forward. Ran a thumb across the nipple with a gentle, fleeting pressure, enough to make her shudder and groan and wish he'd say something, anything, out loud. Preferably about Jaime. Only about Jaime. Something in his voice, with his words.

He kneeled there on the featherbed before her, his arm extended, his hand on her breast. His fingers were skilled, as always, but lacked energy. His eyes were still puffy and his expression was worlds distant instead of miles. His grasp on her breast was firm, but still, somehow, listless, like he was searching for relief rather than pleasure.

"Stop." Brienne pushed his hand away and back into his lap. Pulled her tunic over her head. Her cunt ached so badly for release that even the bed knob gleamed at her, winking, but Pod shifted back, something like the relief he had been seeking easing the lines of his face.

"The kennel girl," Brienne found herself saying, her hair in her face, as she tugged the tunic, pulling the fabric down, down. "The pretty one with amber hair. She is sweet on you, I'm sure, and the daughter of a new hedge knight, too. She would make a man an excellent wife."

"M'lady?" Pod said again.

Brienne blew her hair from her eyes. "Perhaps it's time for us both to stop chasing after things we can't and shouldn't have."

She stood. Pod's attention trailed up with her, his brow creased, some light expression touching his lips--a brief cheering-up by thoughts of the pretty kennel girl, no doubt.  She would be happy to have him, Brienne knew, especially once she discovered the rumors of Pod's talents in the bedchamber were true. And when the war ended ( _if it ever ends_ ), he would make a doting father to her undoubted legion of sweet, fat, dull-witted babes.

Pod's eyes cleared; for the first time since Brienne had entered, he seemed to see her standing there before him.

"Do you mean Ser Jaime, m'lady?" he asked. He swept his covers back over his legs, covering his rousing parts. "Do you think you can't have him?"

Brienne didn't reply as she refastened her belt beneath the swell of her stomach, slung it across her widening hips. She busied herself with her hands and the notches of her belt, so she wouldn't have to meet Pod's eyes.

"I wasn't lying," Pod said. "Swear to the Seven, every bit I told you was true."

"Ser Jaime is a prisoner," Brienne replied, frowning down at the new belt notch she suddenly found herself acquiring in only the past few minutes. "And half-mad." _He would have to be, to think he wants me_.

"Just ask Ser Bronn, m'lady," Pod urged her, "about what Ser Jaime feels for you, from long before what happened with his sister. You know I'm no good as a liar."

Oathkeeper swung in against her side. Stuck there until she readjusted it, pushed the hilt down and away. The gold was cold, the angle odd, caught there wrong, and she couldn't help but remember it thrust back toward her, Jaime's face as he looked at her in his blood-red Riverrun pavilion: _It will always be yours_.

Then she moved to leave, but before she could reach the door, she rounded back on Pod, put her hand in his hair. Kissed him there, on his pink forehead. And left him before he could call her back to ask what in seven hells she meant by it.

**

Brienne's knuckles were bruised by the time Sansa opened her chamber door. The Lady, unlike usual, did not look pleased to see her, her pretty lips pinched downwards, her blue eyes darkened and half-lidded. She had no company, Brienne could see through the open door, and was not flustered, as though she might be hiding a lover. Brienne wondered what exactly she had interrupted to earn such a welcome.

"Fetch your cloak," Brienne commanded, quickly adding, "my lady. The king has given me permission to accompany you to the winter town."

Sansa's eyes grew wide, and she did exactly as ordered. Fluttered back into her room, pulled her heavy wool mantle from a chair, flung it over her shoulders with such haste that Brienne had to turn it back the right-way round, rearrange it so the hood draped across her pretty head. Pinned it together at the base of Sansa's white neck.

"He is still there, isn't he?" Sansa asked. "He hasn't left?"

Brienne hadn't considered that, but she thought of the dark, earnest look on the Hound's face as he sat across from her at the Smoking Log, and said, "No, my lady. He would not leave you."

It was a comfort, in its own way, to be back at Lady Sansa's side, an armored shadow, after they had spent so long within the walls of Winterfell where Sansa had little need of her protection.  Brienne's armor was somewhat less comfortable. Her breastplate fell awkwardly, pushing up at the neck and threatening to choke her, and her breasts ached as they pressed up against the layers of wool, leather, and metal. All this and she was barely halfway. "You're a tall one," the midwife had said, her toothless mouth agape as she stared up at Brienne's considerable height from her slight one. "Might not even see the babe in you until out she pops." The midwife, Brienne was finding, was wrong. A month or two more and she wouldn't fit in the armor Jaime had given her. A month or two more and the king's men would refuse to rally with her, their tolerance in fighting a woman too narrow to give way to fighting one big with child.

Lady Sansa was in measurably better spirits as they pushed through the market, the crowds making way for the Lady of Winterfell and her sworn shield, few offering trinkets and fruits for surprisingly modest prices. Sansa smiled nervously at a few of them, refused them and told them she did not carry her purse, and pushed on through the market to the great squat shape of the Smoking Log, her gloved fingers fiddling with the line of her dress, smoothing it down. She sucked in and licked at her lips, over and over, as if to paint color into a face that had suddenly gone very pale.

At the alehouse, Brienne paid a groom to run inside and retrieve the man with the burnt face, then stood between her lady and the doorway, waiting. The girl stood there beside her, red-cheeked and still fidgeting with her skirts, as if she wasn't already a vision, already a chiseled goddess in comparison to the Hound's rough-hewn visage.

"What if he's not pleased to see me?" Sansa whispered, still worrying the wool between her gloved fingers. "What if he thinks me foolish for coming here to meet him?"

"We are all fools in love, my lady," Brienne replied.

Sansa struck her a sideways glance, but any reply she might have had was interrupted by the boy running back through the door, panting, and a giant figure lumbering out after him.

The door swung shut. The groom scuttled off. The Hound stood there at the door, staring at Sansa, whom Brienne had to hold back with an outstretched arm.

"Your weapons," Brienne said.

Clegane didn't say a word, and didn't take his eyes from Lady Stark. He simply pulled up his tunic, undid his belt with one hand, and flung it along with dagger and axe to the ground at Brienne's feet. His boots, too, came off, until his feet were bare on the cold ground. But he hadn't finished. Brienne continued to watch with hard eyes as he lifted his tunic so that she could see he had no weapon belted beneath it, and when he slid his trousers down about his knees (Sansa snapped her gaze blushingly away), Brienne saw he hid nothing dangerous there, either.

"I will never hurt you," the Hound said to Sansa, almost tenderly, and the girl looked back at him, the color still high in her cheeks.

"Good," Brienne said. "I assume you will want to speak privately. Do you have a room?"

"Yes," the Hound answered, finally allowing her a reluctant glance of acknowledgement.

"Then hire us a new one, with a room connecting. I want to be in earshot so I can come to my lady's call."

The Hound obeyed with coin handed over from Brienne's pouch. She followed the Hound, Sansa behind her, up the narrow, creaking steps to the rooms over the tavern, and stood grasping Oathkeeper as the Hound fumbled with the rusted key.

The door groaned opened. He handed the key ring to Brienne. Sansa looked up at them both, then unpinned her mantle and stepped through without a word.

The Hound watched after her, letting out a shaking sigh.

"How long do I have?" he asked Brienne.

"As long as you need," Brienne replied. "If I hear one cry--"

"I won't touch her," he said. "Never. I can promise you that."

Brienne nodded stiffly, her armor feeling more constrictive than ever. Watched warm-faced as the Hound followed after her lady, and the door sighed shut behind him.

The groom reappeared a few moments later on hushed feet, hand fisted, begging more coin.

"Now fetch me Ser Bronn," Brienne whispered to him, her pursestrings loose in her hand.

"Yes, m'lady," the boy replied, and scurried off to find him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _AN: Spot the Jane Austen quote and get a cookie! (And my apologies for mixing my literatures)._


	22. Brienne/Bronn(ish)

"My Lady Brienne of Tarth."

Bronn was oil, smarm, and borrowed civilities as he plopped himself onto the bed and Brienne stood against the wall, within grasp of the door separating her room from Sansa's. She could only hear the quiet murmur of voices from the other side--talking, nothing else.

"Did Ser Jaime speak of me?" Brienne asked, feeling foolish again for what must have been the tenth time that day.

Bronn blinked at her. "Did Ser Jaime speak of you?" 

"That is what I asked."

"Should've known," he said. He tugged off his gloves and threw them on the rough woolen blanket, stretched his thin fingers. "The Maid of Tarth wouldn't rip me from my bed because she wants me in her own."

"I'm not a maid."

Bronn's eyes fell to Brienne's middle, and a smirk pulled a muscle in his grizzled cheek.

"Aye, I can see that. Ser Jaime must have slipped up north without me knowing, that or else you're a year on. Might want to see a maester about that, if so." He clapped his hands on his knees and leant forward.

"It's not his," Brienne said, unnecessarily.

"Does he know?" Bronn asked.

"Yes," she replied. "But I’m not here to answer your questions. I'm here to ask mine."

"I'm here," he said. "I’m talking. What do I get for my troubles?"

"You're not saying much," Brienne replied.

"Not feeling very talkative," he replied, and leant back on the bed, propping himself up on the mattress.

"You want coin," Brienne said.

He wedged off a boot with his toe. "I could be swayed by other things."

She almost considered him there, for a moment. His slight frame in repose, the black hair curling over her collar, the eyebrows arching as he watched her over the at-least thrice-broken nose. Her insides still ached, it was true, and her heart was still back in that dungeon room, but there was something in his face that intrigued her--a mirrored curiosity. _He wants me_ , Brienne thought. _What am I doing to make him want me?_ It was tempting. And, with Tormund's absence, Pod's disinterest, and Jaime…well…what prospects did she have?

"I will not suck your cock," Brienne said, and Bronn let out a laugh.

"Wasn't asking," he said.

"You want me to lay with you."

"Now that I wouldn't say no to."

"Ser Jaime is your friend," Brienne said, a lump forming in her throat. "You imply that he would have me, and yet you proposition me."

"Because Ser Jaime wants you," Bronn said, and Brienne's stomach knotted. "I've always been the jealous sort. And with all due respect my lady" --his other boot _clopped_ to the floor, and he made a pointed gesture at her middle with his chin-- "it's not as though he'd ever know."

"Say it again," Brienne said.

"Say it?" Bronn asked.

"That Ser Jaime wants me."

"Is it a secret?" he asked. "You were all he wouldn't talk about. His devotion was to Cersei, true, but after that…"

He sighed, knowing this meeting was not going to reach the destination he desired, and flung his gloves back into his lap. Brienne dug into her purse, the conversation from next door still humming reassuringly in her ears, and dug out a heavy coin. Flung it at Bronn. He caught it expertly.

"And before he killed her, he still wanted me," Brienne said, letting her purse fall back against her belt.

Bronn held up the coin to the light. "Aye," he said. "Long before."

"That's all I wanted to know."

"Only that," Bronn said, smiling now, satisfied enough with his reward. "Only that he wants you. Not that he loves you, fast and true?"

The conversation next door suddenly stopped. Brienne's hand fell to the knob, then her fingers relaxed with the sound of Sansa's raised voice--annoyed, but not in danger.

Then what Bronn said soaked into her insides, the cold spreading, raising goosebumps along her spine.

"Don't suppose you want this, either," Bronn said, and reached over and into his sack. Pulled out the strings. Threw out something glimmering onto the floor between them, where it landed with a heavy  _thunk_ : Jaime's golden hand.

Brienne stared at it, lying on the floor in front of her, lifeless and gleaming in the low light.

"He's only half a man without it, really," Bronn said. "Seemed cruel to sell it off for ale."

Brienne looked at him, then knelt to gather it from the floor. Fastened it to her belt by Oathkeeper, so it would swing against her as she walked, sit heavily against her hip, the weight of Jaime there, to remind her.

"Thank you," Brienne said.

"Anything that will make him happy again," Bronn replied, stretching as he once more gathered himself to his feet. "I'm not a complete bastard," he said with that same grimacing grin, "though I swear I do my best to try."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _The delayed train to Fluffsville will be arriving in approximately one chapter's time. We apologize for the inconvenience._


	23. Brienne/Jaime V

Jailer Dunn was hungry, and cold, and as always when he was bored, wanting a good wank, but that was no change there, then.  The Kingslayer-cum-Queenslayer didn't do much for him with that tongue, clanging about in his cell, angry more often than not…and when not, trying to muffle the weeping.

But it wasn't always rage and despair in there. The big blonde came down more often than she was welcome (truth be told, she didn't do much for him either, but judging from the stories flying around Winterfell, he was one of few who felt that way). She probably visited more often than the king allowed, either, but it shut Lannister up for a while after; it was at least for a good ten minutes after the woman left that he heard the Kingslayer gasping in there, mumbling to himself, then trying to muffle a groan as the mattress crackled beneath him, alive with bending, snapping straw. Not that the woman knew, of course. Not entirely bright, it seemed, or maybe didn’t care, or maybe there was something going on in that plain head that Dunn didn't understand. Maybe she thought the Kingslayer unwilling. Dunn considered telling her true, but had told her enough already; it wasn't his fault if she didn't understand.

But sometimes, the girl just got greedy.

"That's not going in," Dunn told her when she came down for the second time that day, a solid gold glove hanging from her belt. She was looking pale and a little breathless, pink spreading across her cheeks and darkening her freckles, making her look almost pretty. She looked impatient, too, and Dunn reminded himself (though he didn't like to) that there was really nothing standing in the way of the Kingslayer's release except this woman's honor and King Jon.

She looked down at her belt and fingered the gold of the hand. She looked up at him, the pink in her face fading to the pallor of sour milk. "It's his missing limb," she said crisply, the same manner of speaking as the Kingslayer. "You would have him go without?" she asked.

"Yes," Dunn replied.

Above his head, he heard the talk-hole in the door slide aside, the quiet _swish_ of the wood _._ The Kingslayer's face appeared, his square jaw near meeting the square corners.

"Listen to him, my dear lady," the Kingslayer said, and again, it made Dunn sour to hear how alike they sounded, these two, like they were brother and sister. Which would explain those gasps and groans he heard in the cell every time the woman had left, come to think it. "How long do you think it would take me to bludgeon a man to death with that thing?" the Kingslayer asked her, and Dunn took a step away from the door. "Shall I tell you how long it took for me to strangle my dear sister?"

"Let me in," Brienne of Tarth said. _Don't do it_ , Dunn urged her, though never out loud, of course. He tried not to fear her, but there was the same glint of gold in her sword as there was in that hand. Sometimes he wondered where her true loyalties lay: to the king, or the Kingslayer?

"Fine," Dunn relented. He took the key ring from his belt and handed it over. "But he's not gettin' tha' hand."

He took her lack of reply as a refusal, but wasn't about to tell her no again. Instead, he pushed open the door, and she walked through with more purpose, less shyness than she usually did. _Somethin's happened_ , Dunn thought with vague interest. _There's more strength to her step tonight_.

There was the loud squeal of chair legs across stone flags, and the creak and groan of the lightweight chair as Brienne of Tarth sat down. Dunn pulled the door shut, realizing too late he'd let her in with her sword ( _idiot_ ), and turned the key in the lock. Slid the panel mostly shut, to give them at least the sense of some privacy, and just enough open for one eye's sight to squeeze through.

He watched on tiptoes, the scene wavering as his calves burned. Watched as the woman dragged her chair so close to the Kingslayer that their knees near-touched.

"Have you come to do me a service, my lady?" the Kingslayer asked with that same golden tongue. "Or shall I service you?"

"I have one question," the woman answered, unhooking the golden hand from her belt and laying it upon her lap, where it nestled on the crease of her thighs. "If you answer it properly, I will return your hand to you."

"You heard the man," the Kingslayer said. "If you return it to me I will kill him."

Dunn made a low noise deep in his throat. He'd be telling King Jon about this.

"You won't," the woman replied. There was still something different about her that Dunn couldn't place. She seemed even bigger, giant-like. Could crush little people beneath her feet. She'd never talked to the Kingslayer with this much determination, either, and Dunn couldn’t be sure that Lannister liked it.

"I won't?" Lannister replied. "My lady, I killed my own sister. What would stop me from killing a man whose only purpose is carting out buckets of my shit?"

"One question," Lady Brienne repeated. "You must answer it. You can have your hand back or not, I don't care. But I won't leave until you do."

The Kingslayer met her with unblinking eyes, and he didn't look quite as handsome in his uncertainty now (though Dunn was sure his wife wouldn't agree).

"What if I don't want you to leave?" Lannister asked.

"Then I'll stay a bit longer," the lady replied softly.

Shame spread over Dunn, hotting his ears. _Shouldn' be listenin' to this_ , he thought, and continued peeping anyway.

"Ask it, then," Lannister said with a sigh.

The words were hard-coming, but she obeyed: "Why did you kill her?"

Dunn knew all the answers to this question. Had heard them himself, shouted and spat at the wall between them as he sat outside his cell at night. _I hate you_ , the Kingslayer would shout, over and over, with venom Dunn had rarely heard from a man. _I hate you I hate you I hate you_.

"She mattered most to me in the world."

The lady's words sounded stung. "That's not an answer, and I'm not even sure you're right. Why did you kill her? And why did you kill the king before her? You had a reason."

He was quiet for so long she snapped at him, " _Well_?"

"Because…" His words was dry as a dead leaf, would crumble in one's hand. "They had gone mad."

The lady scooted forward, reaching out a hand--her own hand, not the heavy shining one in her lap. Dunn knew which one he'd rather reach for, but the Kingslayer chose skin over gold.  "You saved them," the lady said. "Thousands of people. _They_ ," she said, shoving the gold hand into the Kingslayer's stomach--Dunn had to hold his tongue, keep himself from shouting out his protests--"are what mattered most to you. Because others might think that you thrive on betrayal, but you don't." She leaned forward as far as she could, with that babe in the way. "You're not the Queenslayer. You're the hero."

The Kingslayer looked away, cleared his throat, and after a while, said, "A hero who kills his own kin. Even wildlings frown on that."

"I killed my mother coming out the womb," the lady said, and Dunn thought, _No wonder_. "And only for my own sake. So call me kin-slayer, too."

"That's different." He pushed the hand back at her, shoving it into her lap.

"You're right," the lady said sharply, thrusting it back. "Yours required bravery. I was only stubborn, not brave." She took his hand again, the living one, held it in both of hers as the gold one sat stiffly against the back of her palm. "It took bravery for you to come here, and"--she took a deep breath so shaking that even Dunn felt nervous, his insides rending--"love. For me. And here I am, out of love for you. Do not make a mockery of it. Not here. Not now. You gave your hand for me. Now I am giving it back. It is yours. And if you want it, truly want it" --her hand flexed, gripped his harder-- "I am, too. Yours." The words were solid, immovable pieces. " _I_ am yours."

They were quiet so long, looking at each other all queer, and Dunn's legs ached so much that he finally dropped back to his heels and collapsed back onto his little rickety chair. A while later, there was a knock, and he opened the door without looking, and the lady was out with her sword and dagger and all her most dangerous bits, but Lannister was behind her, re-fastening his golden hand.

"Good night," the lady said warmly, departing, and Dunn wished her, "'night," before realizing her words weren't meant for him.

Then the Kingslayer looked up at him through the gap in the door, held up the golden hand as though he meant to flex the fingers. "The things we do for love," he said quietly, almost sadly, and Dunn shut the door and fumbled the key in the lock before he could discover what exactly those loving things might be.


	24. Brienne/Jaime VI (Part 1)

Podrick Payne was a liar.

Jaime Lannister didn't make love to her like Pod said he would…at least not once the oddity was over, the initial, drunken rush. He didn't take her frantically, desperately, without self-control. Not on a bed in a Riverlands inn, nor on a dusty floor, nor in the outside, while the leaves shook with rain overhead, sweeping her along on a tide of "m'lady"s and "does that please you?"s.

No, Jaime Lannister made love slowly, and so gradually that Brienne didn't quite realize what was happening until a fortnight after she returned his hand, when they sat across from each other, not touching as always, and Brienne looked at him and saw something strange on his face: his feelings lay bare, no longer anything hidden between them. Just as he'd accused her, she'd drawn out all his secrets, and he was stripping her of every one of hers.

She had nearly forgotten the longing that had plagued her the day she stormed to the winter town, Sansa at her heel.  The disbelief and uncertainty and anger. Now, only soft smiles passed between them, and probing conversation, and it was almost like years before in those long weeks spent with Jaime as her prisoner, leading him cross rivers, through fields and hedges. The nights spent side-by-side. Only here it was warmer, and there was truth there, undeniable and reciprocated:

Brienne and Jaime were in love.

"Now," Jaime said smiling, popping his thumb from his mouth, "will I be having any of the pigeon pie tonight, or would you like to lay claim to the entire thing again?"

Brienne fixed him with a flat look, and he slid it aside onto the little table.

"Understood," he said. "You are bigger than me, after all. I can only assume the babe will come out roughly my size."

Brienne took the pie and broke it apart over the plate in her diminishing lap. Inexplicably, she was blushing. For some reason, his comments on her size no longer seemed insults, but compliments.

"How was your day?" Jaime asked.

Brienne handed him his half of the pie, still blushing. It was a question a wife might ask when a man returned from the fields on an evening. Dull, ordinary, teeming with genuine interest. "Passable," she said. _I missed you_. "No one died."

"Sounds rather dull to me," Jaime replied, smirking.

"Winterfell is a safe place. People are loyal to the Starks."

"Gods help them if they weren't. I suppose it helps when you don't have multitudes inside your own walls, starving. It was a poor time to be blond in King's Landing."

There was so much she wanted to ask him--wanted to tease from him the secrets of the south, any detail of the new queen, and how it was rumored that Jaime's own brother sat at her side. But it would only be cruel, and there was nothing of importance she couldn’t glean from the dry letters sent by bird from Oldtown.

"Though truth be told," Jaime continued, still smirking, "I have heard there is no better time to be blond in Winterfell."

He fixed Brienne with a look that made her blush start to spread southwards.

"What has Dunn told you?" she asked, busying herself with her pie.

"Quite a bit, once he found out you were smuggling me the good wine and that I wasn't averse to sharing. Who is this Tormund, then?"

Brienne nearly choked on a flake of crust. _Bloody Dunn_.

"Blond?" Jaime asked with raised eyebrows and a teasing smile.

"Red," she replied, hand to her throat. At least he hadn't mentioned Pod. "Bearded. Very bearded."

"A proper northman, then."

"North of north. A wildling," she admitted. "He was smitten with me."

"You sound surprised."

"Very smitten."

"I applaud his sanity."

Put her on top of the highest tower in Winterfell and she could be a beacon, she was glowing so hot.

"A bit _too_ smitten," she insisted.

He grinned through a bite of his bread. Swallowed, his eyes never leaving her.

"Aren't we all."

**

He was talking about Cersei again. Not in a way that made him red-eyed, or like he might begin throwing things at the wall. Nor with any sort of longing that might make Brienne want to flee. Instead, it was with a certain nostalgia, a slight fondness, tinted by the color of current events and somewhat bitter rememberings.

"We were young," he told her as they lay side by side on his narrow bed, crushed together, arms, legs, hips, but nothing else touching. The ceiling overhead was bare and dripping in a corner. It was raining outside, every so often a hard wind driving it through the slats of the shuttered window. "Nearly children. I wonder now what would have happened if we had been separated from birth, sent to separate houses. If we would have come together in that way when we reunited. I'm not sure."

Brienne wanted to ask who had started it--who had been the one to instigate things, twist their relationship from something pure into something sinful. But she didn't ask. From their brief encounter, and from what Jaime had said of her, she rather assumed it had been Cersei. It was with a sudden jolt that Brienne realized--unsuccessful whoring aside--that it was likely that Jaime had been with fewer women than she had men.

 _He's not ready_ , she thought as she left him every night. _He will tell me when he's ready_. And every night, he let her go with a kiss on her cheek and a press of his forehead against hers, while they ignored the telltale _swish_ of the wooden panel in the door and Dunn's grunting effort to stay on his toes.

It was those nights that Brienne twisted herself in her blankets and tried to lie herself to sleep. It was difficult to set aside those thoughts she'd had for years. _He doesn't want you_ , her brain would tell her, shout at her, as the night grew long and dark and her candle spluttered out, leaving her in every kind of darkness. _He_ does _want me,_ the newer, even more stubborn Brienne would fight back. She knew it, from the way he talked to her, from the way they huddled close on his bed, from the way he looked at her with his head held sideways, as though he was trying to learn her.

The lies came most strongly when she was half-asleep, the babe dozing inside her, and would swear she would hear him at her door, creeping inside. Coming to crouch at the side of her bed and stroke her cheek, whisper her name: _Brienne_. She would open her eyes and see him there, gleaming gold and silver in moonlight. She would press her legs together, every bit of her throbbing, as he would lean forward and whisper words across her lips: _Do you want me, my love?_ The dream-hand would move lower, down her shoulder, to breast, to bare waist, hip, thigh, stroke a line across the skin and down to the crease that met her core. Jaime would inhale, tight through his nose, and murmur, _Oh yes, you want me._

Brienne woke from those dreams with an unsatisfied ache between her legs, the sound of Sansa banging about grumpily in her room, and the inability to see Jaime until she had met her lady for the day.

 _I am lying to myself,_ she reminded herself sullenly as she dressed, knocked at their adjoining door, and entered to find Sansa furiously writing a letter that she would later send into the winter town. _He can never come to me, not while he's locked away_.

It was several days more--days of laughing and talking and Jaime reaching forward to eat honey bread from her hand and suck crumbs from her fingers--until she accepted the solution: _I will have to come to him_.

That night, she brought the best wine and the freshest strawberries from the glasshouse. Dunn whistled as he took them upstairs, passing by the silent chambermaid who scurried down with a featherbed in her arms. Brienne took the keys that Dunn had left her and pushed the door open, let the girl through. Let her flutter about, fluffing the featherbed over the straw mattress. Beating the pillows back into shape. Then she curtsied and left them.

"I am being spoiled," Jaime said, the lines she loved creasing his eyes as he smiled.

But she did not smile back. She sat on the edge of the bed, her long legs spread apart. She had brought no weapons, her tunic new and flying loose, her breeches tied loosely, easy to undo with one hand.

Her voice was rough and wispy, not as strong as the word she uttered: "Undress."

Jaime looked at her, eyes wide, the cocky expressions gone. His lips clung together as they parted, finally revealed a brief slash of teeth.

He didn't say anything more. Instead, he pulled his loose shift to his neck, contorting himself as he pulled it with one hand over his head. He was bare beneath it, and not as thin as she expected when locked away for so long. He was solid, well-formed, and pale as the winter moonlight outside.

He still didn't smile as he undid his breeches and pushed them, too, to his ankles. Stepped on them to wrench them from his bare feet.

And once more, he stood before her naked, without that same self-loathing, without the aggression or hatred of all the times she'd seem him like this before.

"Shall I undress you?" he asked. His voice was broken.

"Come here," she commanded.

His lips parted further, unsticking. He looked down at her boots, traced her shape from toe to hip to swell of belly to swell of breasts. Then finally, her face, where his eyes settled, warm, wondering.

He took a step forward.

Hesitated, like he didn't know where to begin.

Then he stepped between her legs, so her knees framed his strong white thighs. Ran his hand across her hair, sliding it back from her face. Looked down at her, his eyes shadowed.

And kissed her.

It was quick, the first. His lips were dry, and soft as lambskin. He licked them before bending down again, one hand sliding beneath her ear, tilting her chin up, the gold hand settling on her shoulder, cold against her neck. If it were skin, he would feel her heart racing, the rapid heave of her uneven breaths.

She pulled away.

"When is the last time someone was kind to you?" she asked him, her bare hands on his bare skin, resting on his hips, holding him close, at the same time holding him away.

"You are," he told her. His thumb ran the line of her jaw, slid up beneath her lower lip. "Since the day I arrived here. You are kind to me even now."

He bent to kiss her again, and Brienne felt that familiar aching, the wet-warm feeling between her legs. She wanted him there more than anything. She had never wanted anything--weapons, comfort, glory--more in her life.

And judging the state of him, hard before her, he felt exactly the same way.

She bent her fingers, pushed her short nails into his hips, tickling the jut of bone. Pulled him closer.

Bent her head.

" _No,"_ Jaime gasped, his hand in her hair, pushing her away. "Cersei hated--"

Brienne looked up at him with wide eyes, feeling full to bursting with want, with sincerity.

"I am not Cersei."

She hoped she looked like she knew what she was doing. She'd seen this done before, in the odd tavern, in the odd encampment with Renly's soldiers (sometimes with a woman, sometimes not). It was often aggressive, a bit cruel, but the rare time, it seemed almost…kind. The greatest thing you could do for a man you cared about, to bring him that sort of pleasure, to love him so sweetly.

She wished Pod had shown her how. "That would be for my pleasure, m'lady," he had told her the one time she had tried. "Not yours." Now she wasn't so sure. She couldn't imagine anything more pleasurable than the sound Jaime made as she took him into her mouth. Looked up at him to see him staring down at her, his fingers lacing hard into her hair. His pupils wide, dark, bottomless.

He groaned as she lowered her chin, slid him in as far as she could bear. Grasped the base of his cock with her wide hand and gently pulled down. His gasp sent a jolt through her.

She released him. Her lips popped. "Have I hurt you?" she asked.

"Brienne," he only managed to say, his hand clenching harder.

She assumed her name meant _no_. She dipped her head again, closing her eyes, felt the thrust of his hips against her, his gold hand resting heavily on her shoulder, every so often drifting down her collarbone, as though if it were still skin and muscle and bone, he would reach for a breast, the hard peak beneath her tunic. He gave a grunt of frustration; she looked up to see damp shining in his eyes.

" _Stop_ ," he said raggedly. He pulled back, sliding from her mouth.

"Why?" she asked.

"Stubborn woman," he growled at her. "I want to be inside you when I have my release. I want to be _with_ you." His hand tightened in her hair, his fingernails gliding against her scalp so sharply it was almost painful. "Let me give you pleasure." She bent to press her lips to his cock once more, but he stopped her, held her there. His eyes were pleading. "Please let me have you," he said. "I feel I have been begging for years."

Finally, she nodded, sat up. Before she had even straightened herself on the mattress, he had her tunic over her head, pulled it from her arms and shoulders. Then he was kneeling, and her breeches were clear across the room.

"Seven hells," he breathed when she was bare before him. "Brienne, you are beautiful."

She closed her arms over her belly, her breasts, only now starting to feel the flush of shame.

"Only when carrying another man's child," she remarked, the humor she intended failing to manifest in her voice.

"Brienne." He pressed kisses to the insides of her knees. Held her legs apart with one pale-silver hand, one gold. Pressed his lips to the insides of her thighs, where her skin was the least scarred, the least calloused. The straw under the feathers crackled beneath her as his hands found her hips. "You have always been beautiful."

She stared at him as though she didn't believe he said it, as though the smoky words of her fantasies hadn't actually left his mouth. He looked up at her, his fingers curving over the tense skin of her navel, arcing to her hip, her waist. Neck arching back, green eyes glowing.

There was no mocking. No cruelty or drunkenness or sad desperation.

He meant what he said.

Every single word.


	25. Jaime/Brienne VI (Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Have the toothbrush ready! (Single-use is fine. You won't need it next chapter.)_

It was impossible to not think of Cersei.

He had been so good for so long. He had trained his mind like he'd trained his body to fight; every day Brienne came to him, he would push his twin sister further and further out of his head, to the dark places where she belonged. The cries of the countless times he'd had her alongside the screams of the men he'd killed on the battlefield, the conversations and tender touches to sit beside the shock of pain of his sword hand parting from his body.

He wasn't sure it was healthy, but it helped. "You're like a beaten wife," Tyrion had once told him, before one of the long stretches of time in which they had stopped speaking to each other. "She crooks her finger and you come, cowering. You don't even see it. She's warped your poor mind until you start slathering at the very thought of our sweet sister's poisoned cunt."

Tyrion was right. He couldn’t think back on his sister's body without imagining her skin shimmering with fire. Green flames burning behind her mad, hateful eyes. He had thought her stunning when she was with his child, but now, he couldn't think on her, the swell of her with Joffrey--when things were still so novel, so new--and think that she had been beautiful. She had been big on her hate of Robert, big on their shared lies; she looked out at everyone like she had proudly swallowed the world, if only to keep it in darkness.

Now, looking at Brienne, he saw only pale skin in sunlight. Life, light, wide blue eyes that looked at him, wanting only to please him, to _love_ him.

Cersei had never been as beautiful as this.

"I-" Brienne was saying, blushing--despite all evidence to the contrary, acting the bashful maid. "Tell me if I do wrong."

Jaime reached up to stroke her face with his wrong hand. He dropped it to her neck, reached up with his other. Ran his thumb across her cheek. Took a sharp breath as she turned her head to kiss his palm with the lips that just moments ago had been fastened around his cock.

_Wench_ , he wanted to say, to tease her, to prod her back into the fearsome maid who had once taken him in ropes to King's Landing. Sometimes he hated to think back to those times, to all the sordid, cruel things he'd said to her--then he thought back on the baths at Harrenhall, and how he'd half-hardened at the sight of her, her strong, pale form in the baths. _Cersei_ , he'd thought at the time, still in pain, half-mad, and impressed at his ability regardless. _I've been away too long_. Lying to himself, as always. How could he have seen this body and thought it was not worth his attention, thought it couldn't be counted to make him come merely at the sight of her firm teats, her round backside, the shine of blond curls, inviting, at her cunt?

"Jaime?" Brienne said softly, and his eyes snapped back to her face, those eyes. He was still standing before her as she sat on his narrow bed, her legs apart, knees framing his thighs. His hard cock jutted between them, still tantalizingly close to that wide mouth.

She scooted back on the bed, making room for him. He kneeled before her, bent back her head, and kissed her again. _Where did you learn to kiss_? he wanted to ask her, but wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer. He'd heard things. He'd accepted them. But he wasn't sure he wanted to know any further detail.

He drew his fingers through her hair and kissed her harder. Nipped at her lower lip, slid his tongue gently, teasingly, into her mouth, seeing what he could do to make her gasp. She accepted his advances shyly, wonderingly. Her own warm hands slid to his back, holding him close, her grip firm.

He tilted her back, back toward the pillows, back toward the bed.

" _No_ ," Brienne suddenly gasped, and Jaime jerked back, pulling her back with him. Her face was red, embarrassed. "Not on my back," she explained apologetically. "It makes me sick."

_Oh, Brienne_ , he wanted to say. He skimmed the softness that covered her hard body. She was so sorry to look a woman, so sorry to have her body a vessel instead of a weapon. Would he listen to him if he told her not to feel shame?

He could show her.

He ran his gold hand across her side, and she shivered. He smiled softly as he gave her another kiss.

"We will have to be creative, then," he said. He kissed her again. Bent to press another kiss to her cheek. Beneath her ear. To the hollow point of her neck, sucking, running his tongue along her pulse as she made the most delightful growl, deep in her throat. His hand reached her breast, the thumb skimming the hard nipple, making her open her legs, making his cock grow even harder, begging to be buried inside her.  "On your side?" he asked, panting.

"Only my right," she admitted, still pink.

He bent further forward, whispered low: "Even better."

She eased herself onto her side, facing out from the wall, and he helped her, taking her hand as she slid down the bed, skimming from her hip up to her shoulder as she squared her back to him. He pressed against her, his cock achingly close to her warm wetness, surging against her cool backside.

"Does this please you?" he whispered into her ear as he bent his legs against her, made her curl around him until they mimicked each other, taking up all the room they could on his bed.

"Everything pleases me," she whispered back.

_Oh gods_. He could come right there, like a green boy, but he'd waited so long for this and it would be all be over far too soon. He was too old to go again soon enough to please her.

At least on this side, his left hand was free. For him to slip his warm, human hand across her hip, beneath her belly, down to the triangle of golden hair. For him to slip his fingers between her folds and feel the nub, slick and swollen, and slide his thumb across it. _Will you like this like Cersei did?_ he thought, not able to help it. Brienne did. Her reaction was instant--a little gasp, a shudder into the pillow and sinking deeper into the featherbed, twisting her neck as she buried her face, her tightly-closed eyes, in her arm. _I love your cunt_ , Jaime wanted to say to her--ineloquently, he realized, but his mind was not currently playing well with words. _I love your eyes. I would love to be buried inside you_.

He flicked the nub again. She pressed back against him, parted her thighs, slung her heavy leg over his, giving him better access. His aching cock slid even closer to her welcoming entrance. _Gods_ , he thought again, as sweat beaded on his upper lip. He kissed her neck, desperate for distraction, but it wasn't coming, because it sounded like she was about to. Just from the simple flick of a finger across that swollen bit between her legs. And she was so _wet_ …

He abandoned the nub. Brienne made a sound, half-pleasure, half-dissatisfaction, and gasped as without prelude he slipped those same fingers between her lips and finally, gloriously, inside her.

_Yes_ , Jaime's mind hissed, triumphant.

"No," Brienne said sharply, and Jaime withdrew immediately.

His mind was fizzling, aghast as he wrestled up on his elbow to stare down at her. She looked up at him, opened her dazzling eyes.

"Your nails…" she explained, blushing again.

He held up his hand, looked at his fingers. Ah, he'd forgotten about that. His one skin-and-blood-and-bone hand betraying him, growing talons sharp enough to tear.

_Fuck_.

"I'm sorry," he told her with a kiss beneath her ear.  So many kisses. He wanted to taste every inch of her. Lick the honey that glistened golden in her hair.

He slid down, away from her, to do just that, but she took a hold of his arm, dragged him back up to his place behind her, nestled against her.

She tiled her hips back to him, found him with her hand between her thighs, and guided him home.

They both groaned loud enough to near-rattle the bolts that held the bed to the ground. She felt…she _felt_. Gods! This. This was nothing like, like….

His fingers found her crest again, careful with his nails, slid against her until she was shaking against his chest, every breath coming out in a shivering gasp. And he realized he was shaking, too. Shaking as he moved into her, drew out, slid in again. Trembling with the effort to keep from spilling, trembling with the knowledge that he was inside of her, that Brienne, Brienne his beauty, was tight around him, slick and wet and warm and making little noises that cut off the thoughts in his head and--

She went suddenly quiet, very still, and he found himself stopping, the most exquisite ache in his thighs, in his head, in his knee where her leg still hung heavily over his. Then he felt it: the spill of wetness, the warmth spreading out from her, onto her thighs, onto his. Heard that little noise, the girlish " _oh-oh_ ", and then he was pumping erratically, all reservations about being a green boy gone, and was thrusting into that wet- _so-wet_ , warm darkness feeling like a whole man again, like the man he was before he lost his hand, only infinitely, wondrously… _better_.

His slick hand found her belly, slid around the curve of it as he drove into her, as she thrust back against him in time, so much more skilled than he ever imagined.

"Oh, Brienne," he gasped, the million-million times he'd gasped _Oh, Cersei_ erased from his mind in that moment. Then a growl: " _Oh…Brienne."_

One breath later--one breath and one endless holding of it--he collapsed against her, boneless, and pressed his forehead to the curve of her neck. Lay there, vibrating and numb. Breathed her in. Breathed himself out.

Slowly, in what felt like hours, feeling came back to him. Sense slowly followed. When it did, he kissed the scar between her shoulder blades. Panted into her skin as she, too, shivered against him, like the room had suddenly gone cold.

He clung to her, as if she were the only thing keeping him there, in that room, in that world. His hand firm on the curve of her belly, as though he expected to feel his babe beneath. _No, not my babe_ , _but hers_ , he reminded himself, because he had to. He held her only closer.

Finally, after a time, she spoke, her back still to him, her voice small: "Have you changed your mind?"

He frowned at her bare shoulders, not understanding.

"About children," she said, as though she knew his thoughts better than he did. Her hand closed over his. "You said you've never been a father. You said you never wanted to be. Have you changed your mind?"

He didn't reply. He could only wonder at the feel of her soft skin beneath his palm.

"You don't have to," Brienne rushed to say. Her neck was hot against his forehead. "I’m sorry. I shouldn't have said."

Jaime squeezed his eyes shut, listening, feeling the vibration of her voice against him. Lifted his chin with inhuman effort. Whispered into her ear, his voice odd, half-choked: "Brienne."

"I should have waited," she said, rambling on from her apologies. "I should have waited for you. It should have been yours."

"Brienne--"

"It can be yours. _I_ can be yours. Do you want it?"

She swept their joined hands from beneath her breasts, down the smooth-skinned curve, down to her lower lips, which parted before him, ever eager.

"Marry me," he said. He didn't realize he was going to say it, but he had. And he'd say it again: "Marry me."

He opened his eyes to find her looking right at him. She was grinning. "Ask me again when you haven't just come."

He grinned likewise, kissed her again. "I will ask you every day until you say yes," he said, meaning it.

She kissed him back, and pressed her forehead to his. "Then I'll look forward to your asking again tomorrow."


	26. Brienne & Sansa III

_It can be yours._ I _can be yours_.

Brienne hadn't even known the words would leave her until they were already out of her mouth, hanging there, heavy, in Jaime's hot little room.

She went to sleep that night shivering with the memory of what had transpired, shivering with expectation of what was still to come. Her hand on her belly, smoothing it, soothing it, for the first time, for some strange reason, thinking that the babe inside seemed almost real. A person, rather than an heir. A son or daughter. _Her_ son or daughter.

 _Jaime's son or daughter, if not by blood. In every way that counts_.

She stared into the dark that night, thinking of the next day, of the promises they'd made. _Tomorrow_ , she told herself, almost cheerful, and half-chastising herself for refusing him earlier…though she knew her acceptance would have been a foolish one. _I'll see him tomorrow._   _I'll have him tomorrow._ Her thighs and mound ached, unsatisfied with having had him only once.  _I won't give him an answer, not yet. Only when it's right._

And finally she and the babe both slept, their movements peaceful, content in the promise of what daylight would bring.

**

There wasn't a tomorrow, at least not the one that Brienne had hoped for.

When the sky was still the heaviest black-gray, she woke to blood on her thighs. Sansa woke to her raised voice, and the whole tower woke to the midwife and the maester bursting into her chambers, demanding she open her legs to their cold hands, lantern light, and cold metal instruments so much harder than a golden hand.

Everyone had been sent back to their chambers, except Sansa, who refused to leave unless Brienne asked her to. Brienne didn't ask.

"Legs apart," the toothless midwife said, knocking Brienne's heels together and pushing down her knees. The maester, a young, fat lad with a short chain, fresh from the Citadel, stood behind her, looking both annoyed and faintly relieved that he'd been upstaged. At the side of the bed, Sansa was holding Brienne's hand, a kindness Brienne hadn't asked for, but was very glad to have.

"My mother bled with Rickon," Sansa murmured as the midwife began poking around the folds that just hours ago had been so enthusiastic to receive Jaime. "And they were both fine, in the end."

 _No they weren't, my lady,_ Brienne thought, but would never say, though from Sansa's face, she reckoned the girl was thinking the same thing. _They're both dead_.

Brienne couldn't say anything, not really. Could barely feel Sansa's hand in hers. She could barely feel anything but the strangest, most sickening sense of… _regret_ wasn't the right word. _Guilt_ was closer. She felt guilty. Not of what she'd done, but of what the consequences might be.

  _It's my fault_ , Brienne thought, biting her tongue. It was mystifying how fingers in the same place could illicit such different reactions. _I've killed my babe. I've killed my father's heir, all for love_.

Winter could have come before the midwife finished and Brienne wouldn’t have been surprised. The woman finished her proddings, her poking around and pressing cold brass to Brienne's insides, her belly. She whispered something into the maester's ear. They both nodded at each other--frowning, no love lost between them--and the midwife shuffled out, her woolen bag swinging from her hand.

The maester's round face was red as he approached, his hands wringing before him, a smile that she supposed was meant to be reassuring loosely in place.

Brienne finally let her legs slide out across the shucked bed.

"The bleeding's stopped now," the maester said, confidently, as if he'd been the one to examine her himself. "It might be best if you stayed to your bed until the babes come, but all seems to be well--"

Sansa heard his word before Brienne did. "Babes?"

Brienne looked at Sansa, at the red-faced maester, echoed Sansa's word: "Babes?"

"It is likely," the maester said, still smiling. He held up his hands, gestured as if tracing the shape of the moon in the air. "You are measuring large for how far along you are. And the midwife has her little magic tricks, but she has convinced me that there might indeed be two in there."

"Twins," Brienne said, collapsing back against her headboard, too shocked to feel the relief she knew should have been overwhelming. Instead, she could only think of Jaime. And Cersei. "What are they?" she asked.

The maester's soft smile grew.  "We won't know until they're out, I'm afraid. The midwife says boys, but she thinks you can tell weather with a rock and a string, so I'm not sure we should put much store in it." He held his finger to his nose and winked at her. Brienne tried to exchange a puzzled glance with Sansa, but Sansa was still staring at him.

"And she should be abed from now on," Sansa said, her voice back to its commanding tone.

"I think it best," the maester said. "A bit of light walking around the room, no further. And no fighting." He pointed his index finger at Brienne, the most ineffective scolding she'd ever encountered. He looked terrified of her. "Your lady will have to find herself a new shield in the meantime."

Brienne stifled a groan. She couldn't even make it through a night of sleep without feeling as though her muscles were about to wither, atrophy away. She wanted to be back, ready for the front lines as soon as the first snow came, which she knew would come soon, perhaps before she was ready.

And if she couldn't leave, that meant no going downstairs, no bringing wine to bribe Dunn, no squeezing herself into bed beside Jaime….

"I will need to move," Brienne said. "Her new guard will need these chambers."

"We'll speak of it later," Sansa said, patting her hand.

 _No_ , Brienne wanted to say. _Please,_ she wanted to beg. _If I'm not able to see him, at least let me be closer to him_.

And through the haze of blood and panic and shock and the remnants of sleep, and the look in Sansa's wide blue eyes, Brienne remembered the question Jaime had asked her, the ghost of his hand on her ribs, across her belly, across her unborn babes, and wished to all the gods that she could go back, right now, and tell him _yes_.


	27. Brienne/Jaime VII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Fluff and angst ahead. Fluffy angst. Flangst? (Why does that sound dirty?)_

Three days.

Three days of sleep, sun-up, eat, sleep, stare-at-ceiling, sleep, eat, sun-down, sleep.

Three days of loneliness. Three days of mind-numbing nothingness.

Three days of no Jaime.

On the fourth day Brienne woke to find her things being moved. Groggily, she raised her head from her pillows, still too tired to bemoan her fleeing instincts (months ago and she'd already have her dirk at a thief's throat; now, she could only watch through bleary eyes, and demand, "What are you doing?").

"You're being moved, m'lady," the houseboy--more a houseman, really, and dressed all in green, with very tight, clinging emerald breeches ( _My gods, I miss Jaime,_ Brienne thought as her tiredness waned and her eyes began to clear). "So these quarters can go to Lady Stark's new shield," the boy said.

Brienne blinked at him. "Of course," Brienne said. She moved her feet beneath her blankets, and thought how very comfortable she was, and how the maester had told her not to leave the room. "Will someone be carrying me, then?"

An hour later, she wished she hadn't asked.

The Hound was at her door. The Hound, the man she had nearly killed, standing there and glowering at her, looking very much like he wouldn't mind playing a Bolton and flaying her alive. It was only when Lady Sansa appeared at his side, a healthy distance between them, that an odd, blank sort of look crossed his face and his attention was back on Brienne, the hatred vanished from his eyes.

"Are you ready?" Sansa asked gently.

Brienne was on her feet, tying her robe about what remained of her waist.

"Yes, my lady, thank you," she said. Gods, she sounded so weak.

 _A blushing maid,_ she thought grimly as the Hound took her beneath her arm, hoisting her until nearly all her weight had left the floor, leaving only the lightest of pressure remaining on her feet. _That's what I feel like. Some weakling damsel, soft and useless. Throw me to the dogs. I'd make good meat._

The Hound didn't speak, but Sansa followed them all the way down, stopping and speaking fluidly as they made their awkward progress down the narrow, winding stairwells to Brienne's new quarters.

"There's a featherbed," she was saying. "A view of the training yard. And books…nearly half the books from the library. Though let your maid know and she will arrange to bring you new ones.  And I thought perhaps a knife, and some wood, so you can do some carving, if you like…I only thought, if you wanted some use of a blade."

"You are too kind, my lady," Brienne replied, concentrating very hard on not sending the Hound careening out from beneath her, nor how his iron-muscled arm was undoubtedly bruising her armpits. She wished he would just put her down, and now that her comfortable sleep-mind was gone, she spat on the memory of the maester's smiling face and his recommendations. Would it kill her if she walked the remaining steps? _Unlikely,_ she thought ruefully, as the Hound sent her lurching down another step, _but it might kill my babes_.

The Hound unloaded her unceremoniously onto the promised featherbed, and moved until he was some distance away, his palms flat on the hem of his tunic. Sansa stood at his side--she was not a short girl, but she looked miniscule in comparison to her new guard, and all the more lovely for his scars. Brienne wondered if their own standing side-by-side had a similar effect, and if her own plainness only worked to further highlight Sansa's beauty.

"We will leave you, then," Sansa said. She almost looked like she might take her shield's arm--there was a small movement, a twitch of her hand--but she didn't. The Hound looked down at her, like he had expected her to, then determinedly stared at the same blank ceiling that Brienne would come to know rather well in the months ahead. "You will let me know if you need anything, Brienne," Sansa said.

 _Bring me Jaime_. "Yes, my lady," Brienne replied. _Please_. "Thank you."

**

Later that evening, her door groaned open, and the Hound once more filled it, the glower back, no Lady Sansa in attendance to coax the hatred from his expression.

"Do you think it sporting to kill a pregnant woman in her bed?" Brienne complained, looking up from the dullest book she had ever had the displeasure to flick through. A few similar ones were scattered across her covers, discarded.

"Trying to deflect my blade by pleading your sex, are you?" the Hound scoffed, his eyes roving as he stepped into her room, searching the walls, crevices, windowsill. "There was a time you wanted to kill any man who called you woman."

Brienne scowled at him, and one of the babes kicked hard, as if to sharpen the point he'd made.

"What business do you have here?" Brienne asked.

He didn't answer. Instead, his hand landed on her swordbelt, and he tucked Oathkeeper beneath his arm.

"You can't!" Brienne protested, her covers falling, books sliding as she sat further up in her bed.

"I can," the Hound replied darkly. He threw open the desk drawer and withdrew her dirk. It went in its scabbard to join Oathkeeper beneath his arm.

Finally, he came to her bedside, picked up the crude figurine she'd carved in a pique of boredom that afternoon, and held it between thumb and forefinger. He said nothing as he examined it, then threw it onto her bed to join the books. Finally, he took her carving knife, too, and before he would heed any of her protestations, he was gone.

A matter of minutes, and he was back.

With Jaime.

Jaime's chains clanked and dragged as he stepped into her room, the Hound lurking, an ugly shadow behind him.

"Brienne," he said. He looked terrible, and drawn, and like he hadn't slept in days. There were dark shadows beneath his eyes, and his golden hair was darker, lank. One sleeve hung slack around his arm where the golden hand was missing. _What have they done to him?_

The door thundered closed behind him; Brienne heard the metallic grind of the key and bolt. They were locked inside.

Brienne threw aside the covers. The books thunked to the floor. She went to Jaime and buried her head in his neck, and breathed him in, the sour, unwashed, wonderful stink of him, and felt his heart beating against her cheek.

His hand was on her belly, stroking it through the fabric of her loose tunic, the only thing she could bear to wear as she was always far too hot.

His ankle chains rattled across the floor. "You didn't come back," he breathed into her ear. "I thought I'd done wrong. I thought worse. Dunn only said he'd heard of you screaming--"

"I don't scream," Brienne said firmly, then her voice roughened. "I bled," she whispered. "I thought I'd lose the child. I've been confined to my bed. I wanted to tell you, but I couldn't come--"

He seemed to collapse into her, all tension gone, the chains weighing him down to the floor.

"Jaime," she urged him, unsure if she should prop him up, unsure of anything except that she was so grateful, so glad he was here, so frustrated, so _hopeless_.

Then she was crying, and his hand was on her face, and every weak, womanly thought she had pushed aside every waking moment for the past three days came rushing back into her until she felt like she might explode with it, like she might crush herself against the rocks under the waves of the relentless tide of a woman's emotions.

"Brienne," Jaime was saying, easing her back from him. He kissed her, with sadness and longing, his fingernails dragging light, tender lines across her cheek. "Oh gods, I was so worried. Are you well? Is the child well?"

Brienne felt her face grow hot, her skin drying the tears to trails of salt. Jaime looked at her, then frowned. "What is it?"

"Not child," Brienne said, the words painful. "Children."

Jaime was quiet for a long while. His teeth appeared, and his jaw sharpened.

"Twins," he said.

"That was what the midwife said."

"Two of them."

"Yes."

"A boy and a girl?"

"You do realize that there will be no telling until they're born."

"Gods," he said. "I hope they're girls."

Brienne's heart stuttered in her chest. It was odd how the midwife could tell her one thing, but it didn't become real until Jaime said it aloud. _Twins_. She was having two, two sons, two daughters, a son and a daughter…she was going to be a mother. Gods, she was going to be a _mother_. How she would have laughed at the prospect only a few years past! And now she stood here in her room, tethered to her bed, more a prisoner even than Jaime, with the Hound stationed outside her door. A Catelyn Stark in training; already a slave to her children's well-being.

And Jaime was here, telling her in earnest that he hoped she would have daughters.

That _he_ would have daughters.

The wariness had passed and he looked alive again. His eyes awake, even his golden hair lighter, brighter. His eyes roved down her form, from where her breasts swelled against her tunic, to where her belly swelled even more prominently, to her legs, knees, ankles. Finally, he looked at her face, his eyes wide.

"You look incredible," he said.

"Don't be an idiot," she said.

"I mean it. You're just--" He stared at her, sucked in his lower lip, his hand reaching out to stoke her waist, her hip, sending the most pleasurable shivers up her spine from between her legs.

"Your teats," he murmured. "Your hips." He sounded so much like Tormund attempting to woo her, she nearly laughed--and would have, if she wasn't fighting the impulse to open her legs and mount him. "The roundness suits you," he told her.

"I'm huge," she complained.

"You've never been small, Brienne."

"There was purpose to my size before. Now--"

"You've growing life inside of you. Surely there's no greater purpose than that."

"You know that is utter shit."

He grinned and kissed her lightly. "Your eyes, too. They have always been beautiful, but now…" His smile faded. "What worries you?"

"Where would you like me to begin?"

"On the bed, preferably."

She found her familiar hollow, and Jaime nestled in beside her, momentarily distracted by the tangling of the covers in his ankle chains. Finally, they both settled, Brienne half-propped up on cushions, Jaime on his side, skimming her sensitive skin with his palm while he pressed his handsome face close to her, his breath warm on her neck.

"This worries me," she said at last, eyes fixed on the blank ceiling.

His hand stilled. "What?" he said. The fabric wrinkled between his clutched fingers. He lent over her. His breath smelled of gravy. At last Dunn had still been feeding him, and he'd been eating well enough. Plus the salty scent of it made her mouth start to water. She was always so _hungry_ , in so many different ways.

"This?" Jaime asked, his hand on her neck, skimming her bones and tendons with his fingers. Down her throat to her collarbone, to the aching swell of her breasts. He cupped one gently, held it in his palm. " _This_?" he whispered in her ear, and pressed a kiss it, skimming the skin beneath her jawbone with his teeth. The hand trailed lower, across the rise of her belly, swept across the curls that could be purple for all she knew, for how long it had been since she'd last seen them, and--

"Stop," she said, and he withdrew. "Yes," she said, "that."

Jaime sagged into the bed.

"That's what caused the bleeding the first time," she told him through her teeth.

"You're certain?" he said. "Is that what the maester said?"

"That's what I say," she replied. "It wasn't coincidence."

He frowned, but withdrew his hand. Brienne wanted to arch her hips into his fleeting fingers.

 "I am sorry," he said.

"Gods," breathed Brienne. "So am I."

"I suppose it makes sense," Jaime mused. "Cersei was suddenly desperate to meet me when Tommen refused to arrive. She said Pycelle had told her that the king might help speed things along."

Brienne swept her hand across her belly. For once, the babes seemed still. Sleeping, she hoped. Resting and growing strong.

"I don't need speeding," she said. "Not yet."

"Damn," Jaime growled.

"Indeed."

When they had both calmed themselves, and the hardness against Brienne's hip had flagged, Jaime flung his arm across her middle and nestled into her side. She closed her eyes for a moment, not tired, but wishing she could sleep, and sleep forever, and Jaime could sleep there beside her and never have to leave.

But the wind was kicking up outside, whistling through the shutters. Winter once more fighting to take its place inside the walls of Winterfell. There were more ravens coming from the Citadel, more predictions on weather patterns, charts of the sun and stars. Reports from the Wall, too. Nothing good.

"I worry about what will happen to them, once they're born," she said, very awake, and Jaime opened his eyes, just as awake as she. "I can't keep them here. I'll have to send them south, to Tarth. The castellan will care for them, and they may comfort my father in his last days, if he is still alive to receive them."

"And you will go with them," Jaime said.

"No," Brienne replied. "My place is here."

"Not with your children?"

"Their place is wherever keeps them safe. My place is where I can keep them safe, and that place is here, as long as I can ever get out of this bloody bed."

Jaime made some murmur that sounded like agreement. "We will make sure you are back fighting, stronger than ever."

"We? Am I your prisoner now?"

He laughed. She felt herself growing teary again ( _ridiculous_ ) at the sound of it.

"If only," he said. "I quite like the thought of you like this, lounging half-naked and pregnant in my bed."

 "You'd like me to do this again, would you?"

His reply was teasing, but thoughtful. "I'm sure the next one will be easier, Lannister babies often are. And the next after that…"

Her ears were hot, the warm spot between her legs throbbing. She was already pregnant, and bed-bound, and yet his words made her want to open up to him, take him in. Her body was betraying her.

"And you said you never fancied yourself a father," she said.

"I also said I might change my mind if you changed yours. Now. What else worries you?"

 _Everything_.

"Dying," she said simply. The ache between her legs faded, but didn't leave. It would return with fanfare if he so much as brushed her with the back of his hand, she knew. "In the birthing bed," she clarified.

"You were never afraid of dying before," Jaime replied. He propped himself up on his shortened arm so he could look down on her, concern plain in his green eyes.

"No," she agreed. "Not in battle."

 _Now I have you_ , she didn't say. She suddenly felt sick. She twisted to lie on her side, and she shoved away Jaime's attempts to help her, as though she couldn't manage to turn herself.

"So what is different?" he asked once she had re-settled.

"Control," Brienne told the wall. "I can block a blow. I can't stop myself bleeding out from the inside."

"Quiet, wench," Jaime chastised her. He pressed his lips to her shoulder; she thought in a kiss, but when she looked at him, she only found him lost in thought, his eyes wide. "The gods aren't done with you yet," he said.

"You don't believe in the gods," she retorted.

"No," he agreed. "But whatever this is. Why ever we're here. It's not your time, and not your way." He swept back her hair from her forehead, said tenderly, "You'll outlive us all."

Her voice was quiet. "Wishful thinking, immortality."

The point of his chin pressed squarely into her arm as he looked down at her, his hand stroking circles on her bare thigh. "Heroes are always immortal, regardless. They'll sing songs of you, the Woman Warrior of the Emerald Isle. You'll live on in the memories of every man, woman, and child in Westeros until the end of days."

"Are you drunk?"

"I haven't had wine since we were last together. I am in earnest." His voice was gentle, his eyes kind. Loving. "Your deathbed is not your birthing bed, Brienne."

"I hope you're right," she admitted. Her voice cracked.

"I am," he insisted. He chuffed into her arm, a mirthless, tearful laugh. "Besides," he said, "who will go on to birth my babes if you are dead?"

Her face began to redden again. "I'm sure you'll find someone suitable to fill the role."

His hand closed over hers. "I thought I already had."

**

It was hours, but still, the Hound took him away too soon.  Jaime readjusted his clothing as the key turned in the lock, and Brienne pulled down her tunic from where Jaime had been exploring her skin with his fingers, curious, gentle, and careful to arouse neither her nor himself (with varying degrees of success).

"Time to go," the Hound said unnecessarily, one hand on his sword.

Jaime bent to give Brienne one last kiss, and ignored the Hound's interruption of, "I wasn't asking."

Finally, and very slowly, Jaime obeyed, shuffling across the stone floor, letting every second to the door drag just as heavily as his chains, his eyes never leaving Brienne's form.

Then he was out into the corridor, his arm behind his back, one cuff fastened about his remaining wrist, the other end of the chain clenched hard in the Hound's meaty hand.

"Thank you," Brienne told the Hound, before he could leave her.

He scowled at her, ugly as ever. "Didn't do it for you," he said.

"I know," Brienne replied. "Thank her, as well, if it pleases you."

The door slammed, and dust floated from the ceiling, the falling clatter of loose stones joining the hard patter of rain outside Brienne's window.

She collapsed back into her cushions, her hand idly resting between her legs. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine the feel of Jaime's fingers there, fluttering across the swelling nub at the crest of her women's place. Her belly rested in the crook of her elbow, and the babes began to move again, making ticklish movements across the soft skin of her inner arm, desperate to remind her that they were indeed still there.

Brienne flung her hand away, sending up a puff of Jaime's scent from the bedding. Even with her hand--and his--absent, she could still feel the ghost of it there, the pressure between her legs. And the frustrating, mind-numbing inability to do anything about it.

She blew her hair from her face, and muttered the only word she could think of--teasing, frustrating, all-encompassing:

"Fuck."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Did you know I've written a[Gendry/Arya fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7583905/chapters/17255794) in this universe? I kind of love it. Also, they might be showing up at some point in this story. So you might want to read it, I guess? Though it won't be necessary. It would still be great._
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> _Thank you for your clicks. I am a glutton for comments and kudos, and I can't believe this story is racing to the top of the Jaime/Brienne charts. Thank you!_


	28. Brienne/Everyone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne has difficulty coping with the side effects of her pregnancy.

Brienne never thought she would find chastity difficult. Bed rest, yes, that was to be expected, especially when every day was becoming greyer, and heavier, and starting once more to freeze, snow dusting the distant hills. She had spent so many years of her life being told that no man would wish to have her that it ought to have been easy, going back to that state, now that she wasn't allowed.

It was not easy. A man _did_ want her, and badly--Jaime was starting to relegate himself to her chair instead of the bed, feet distant from her, not trusting himself to explore with his hand and not his tongue the changes in her form. "Gods, you are beautiful," he was telling her, once, twice, thrice a day, like a man who could think of naught else to say, and with such conviction that even with the bulging, itching evidence to the otherwise, Brienne was starting to believe he might be right.

She wished she was in the same frame of mind with which she had examined Pod before Jaime's arrival at Winterfell. That same distaste, that same nauseating feeling of slickness, oiliness, when she even contemplated the very _idea_ of sex.  Now, she couldn't even understand how she could have ever felt that way. Now, all she ever wanted to be was naked, with Jaime over her, watching her, that same intent look of self-control on his face, hardening his jaw. She wanted to see him bare, run her wide hands over his wide cock and feel it come alive beneath her fingers. She found herself lounging in bed during her long, lonely days, distracted to the point of self-injury as she carved her figurines, living for the moment she might hear the turn of the knob to her chambers, or the clink and rattle of chains that had grown nearly erotic in its musicality.

She was already half-gone when he arrived today, and she felt the dampness in the smallclothes as soon as she heard the metallic clatter outside her door. Her breath caught as she wished Jaime welcome. He took the usual chair she despised feet away from her, and leant forward, his hand on his knee.

Smiled as he plucked a figurine from her table.

Gods, he was a thousand times more handsome than he had been a mere two days before. Even from here, she could smell him. And he smelled…she didn't even know. She wanted to make ridiculous comparisons, some romantic, rambling yearnings: like thunderstorms, like a calm ocean, like a man who hadn't been imprisoned for weeks.

In truth, he smelled like Jaime, which after the dreams she'd been having lately, was more than enough to tip her lightly over the edge of sanity, and have her begin to open her legs beneath her coverings.

He didn't notice. His attention was focused on her newest figurine, which he held up between his fingers.

"What is this," he asked, "a rabbit?"

"It's a wolf," Brienne replied, pressing her knees firmly back together.

"Ah. You have been very productive, haven't you?"

"Don't mock me."

His smile was all teeth and teasing. "Not mocking. Only observing."

"I'd offer the knife so you could show me how you would do better," Brienne grumbled, "but I'm afraid you'd have to ask the Hound, as he insists on taking it away from me whenever you visit."

"I must thank him."

"They're not for you," she countered. "They're for the children."

 _Children_. The word was beginning to trip more easily from her tongue.

"Excellent idea." He smoothed down a fan of splinters, laughter in his eyes. "They can learn to avoid stabbings in the cradle." He placed the wooden wolf back on her little table. "Now," Jaime said, his hand still there, within grabbing distance of hers. She nearly took a hold of it, pulled him to her, and placed it on her breast.

"Now," he said again. His voice was deliciously low. "What can I do for you?"

 _Fuck me_ , Brienne wanted to say. _Push me up against the wall. Let me wrap my legs around you. Fuck me, hard_.

She buried her face half-into her pillow.

"Nothing," she said.

"Surely I must." The smile slid way. "They didn't bring me yesterday, which I admit to not being terribly pleased with."

_I asked them not to. I was afraid I'd bury you inside of me and lose both the babes._

"I was tired," Brienne replied, closing her eyes tight, hoping that would make it easier.

"Were you?" Jaime said. She heard the rustle of thin blankets, felt the pressure of him kneeling beside her on her bed. Then she felt his hand in her hair, sweeping it back from her forehead--she shuddered to think of it, limp and dull and in need of washing, doing her face no favors, and then she shuddered once more as she felt the trail of fingers along the precise curve of her ear, down to the arch of her neck.

She turned her head. His breath was on her face. She felt his words on her lips.

"Are you still tired?" he asked.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Shall I try to wake you?"

 _What am I doing?_ Brienne wanted to say as he lowered his lips to hers, slid the briefest of kisses onto her lips. _We're being foolish_. _Young, headstrong, reckless lovers. Sacrificing sense to lust_.

"Jaime," she said, pushing him away. "We must stop."

"I know," he said.

 _He lusts for me,_ Brienne thought.

"Gods," Jaime breathed, his hand finding the bulge in his breeches as he stifled a groan.

She ached just as badly, she was sure. More, since she couldn't even begin to relieve herself. _He could relieve me. He wants to. He wants me…he's hard for me, from only one kiss._

"Go," she gasped.

He pulled back. Nodded.

And with a knock on the door and the clatter of his chains, he was gone.

**

It wasn't only Jaime.

Of course, it was _mostly_ Jaime. Almost entirely, truly. Her love, her life. Future adoptive father to her children, proclaimed blood-father to scores more in the future. She wanted him; of course she wanted him. More than anything…more than knighthood, more than honor, near-enough as much as she wanted her babes to come out in two whole, breathing, wailing pieces.

But it wasn't just Jaime she wanted.

Pod came to visit her. Sat on her bed, even, like she was an invalid, and patted her hand. It was ridiculous how such a simple, innocent movement--the sort of touch one might give to one's grandmother--could light such sparks in her veins, such fires deep in her belly.

"They're teaching me to think in fighting, m'lady," he was telling her, prattling, but Brienne could focus on little but his hand near hers, and the fact that he had two of them, and knew very well what to do with them. He wasn't Jaime, true, but he was very good at pretending. "How to be quicker in my head," he continued. "Not sure it's working, but Ser Bronn says I'm looking a bit lighter on my feet--"

Brienne had been desperate to talk of swordplay for weeks, had enjoyed listening to the clatter and shouts from the training yard, and her brief forays to the window, from time to time, but right now, when it was allowed, encouraged, she had stopped listening entirely. Pod had, most likely unwittingly, scooted back far enough so that his backside was touching her hip. She wanted to touch it. Feel if it was as firm as she remembered.

"Can I touch it, m'lady?"

Brienne's fingers flinched away.

"What?" she said, hand hanging in the air between them.

"Your belly." Pod was blushing, a sweet red flooding his cheeks. "I've never touched one before.  I mean, not one with a babe inside. Can I?"

Brienne almost reached for her covers to push them down. Almost did likewise with her tunic, pulling it up. Almost reached for Pods warm hands and slid them across her middle, up to her ribcage, up to her breasts.

"No," she said, breathing hard.

"M'lady?"

"No," she repeated. "You may not."

"Oh." Pod flushed redder, looking hurt, and turned to look at her sincerely, his backside pressing firmer into her thigh. "Apologies," he said. "I didn't mean to offend."

"Please leave, Pod," Brienne requested.

"Yes, m'lady," Pod said. He stood and gave a little bow, still looking flustered. "Right away, m'lady."

"And Pod?" she called after him.

He stopped reluctantly, still itching to flee.

"Do come back," she said, "but please, after the babes have left me."

**

As if the world wasn't already conspiring against her…as if it wasn't enough to have Jaime coming to her chambers to drive her into fits of wanting, or for Pod to visit, oblivious to her aroused state… Tormund Gianstbane arrived back at Winterfell.

He didn't knock, but Brienne had been forewarned by Sansa that morning. She'd left her bed some time ago, and had carefully positioned herself in the chair that Jaime favored so she might look out the window, playing with knives as she watched the training. She didn't know why she was so hesitant to let him see her in a weakened state, when she had been honest with Jaime from the very beginning, and Tormund himself was the one responsible for it. Perhaps it was his words, his compliments--he had only seen Brienne the warrior, had fucked Brienne the warrior. But he had never truly known her. It hadn't been necessary, really. At the time.

"Not where I thought I'd find you," he said as he positioned himself at her door, folded his thick arms, and watched her as she continued to accidentally slide away a bit of a weasel's nose with her knife.

"It's only weeks until the babes come," she said. "Did you want me in the yard? Want to throw me over your shoulder again?"

"That would be a sight to behold." Unlike Jaime, he didn't start at the mention of "babes." Perhaps he had already heard. Perhaps he didn't truly care.

Brienne looked up from her carving and set her stub-nosed weasel aside.

"Are you in need of something, Giantsbane?"

"Aye," he replied. "A large woman in my bed tonight."

"Oh, for the love of the gods--"

"Only I've heard you've found your satisfaction elsewhere," Tormund continued, and before Brienne could reply, he threw up his hands. "As is your right. I always knew I'd lose you to some pretty southern lord."

"You never had me," Brienne said, scowling.

His eyebrows shot up comically, his grin pulling off to one side. "Oh, I think your belly disagrees with you."

"I'm my own woman, Giantsbane."

His grin only widened. "That you are."

"And I will fuck who I want."

"And you will not extend that honor to me?"

Brienne's jaw tightened, and she looked at him so hard her head began to throb. He looked as wild as always, and was as indecently dressed as she, too much skin showing than was proper…or sane, considering the temperature outside. His arms were on display, the freckles and ropey muscle. His beard had been recently trimmed, and his red hair looked sleeker, healthier, like the slightly warmer climes had grown to suit him, or he had grown to suit them. He had been eating well at the Gift. He had always looked strong; now, he only looked stronger.

"I have turned my attentions elsewhere," Brienne said.

Tormund's grin faded, but his smirk remained. He bent into a slight bow, his hands a mockery of primness at his sides, like he was lifting skirts for a curtsy.

"I'm sure the goods will prove the quality of the source," he growled, eyes set on her belly. "If you require more heirs, you know where to find me."

**

"Almost there," the toothless midwife lisped, with a pat to her middle. Brienne felt monstrous, unable to move, pinned to her bed. "Any day now, I think," the woman continued. "Best be prepared."

"I want them out," Brienne said, the first time she had admitted that to another person. She had wanted them gone for weeks.

"You will find the urges fading," the midwife had told her at her last visit weeks before. "Not to worry, they will go." But they hadn't gone. Brienne had lost all semblance of sense. She wanted to do nothing but eat and sleep, but most of all, she wanted to fuck. Jaime, particularly. Often. Hard.

"Soon," the midwife continued. "They should come out soon. Best for twins to come out a bit earlier, I always thought. Stubborn things. Having us worried about their hurrying for so long, and now all they want is to stay put."

"Is there anything you can do?" Brienne said, as the midwife once more pressed the cold brass horn to her belly and bent low, listening intently.

"No," the midwife said, apparently happy as she began to pack her instruments away. Her disposition was cheerful, almost comradely. "Nothing _I_ can do _._ "

It wasn't until the midwife left that a ray of understanding crept through to Brienne's dusty mind. Nothing _she_ could do. But something Brienne could do? The midwife hadn't said.

 _Something someone else can do_?

She was weak on the stairs but the babes were contented, very stuck and unwilling to move as it would mean ceasing to assault her ribcage. Still, she took them carefully, and since she had been moved, it was no longer very far at all to go. Plus every step seemed to strengthen her, fortify her resolve.

It was Dunn. It was always Dunn, and he was sleeping, his legs stretched out, his head craned back uncomfortably, resting on the lip of his chair.

"Good afternoon," Brienne greeted him.

He jerked awake, spluttering. "M-m'lady?" he said, on his feet, blinking away the sleep in his eyes.

There was a voice from the other side of the cell door. Jaime's: "Brienne?"

"I've come to see Ser Jaime," Brienne said. She unbuckled her sword belt, when she had only buckled on a few minutes before, slung it low across her widened hips. Threw off her dagger. She thought she must look ridiculous, but she had never come to Dunn unarmed, and he had never refused her. She wasn't going to start now.

"M'lady, I heard--"

"I don't care what you heard." Her legs were aching, a pain in her back simmering low, but it was nothing compared to the pressure between her legs, a wall about to give way if she did not have Jaime, and did not have him soon.

"Brienne," Jaime said again, half amazement, half protest.

"Let me in," Brienne demanded, sure that every ounce of her strength was back--that she could lift Dunn into the air if she had to, shake him until the keys came loose. "Now."


	29. Jaime/Brienne VIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Sorry I've been so remiss in posting! I like to try and be ACCAP (as canon-compliant as possible), but Season 7 spoilers are coming thick and fast and it's rattling my mojo a bit. I'll try and wrap this up in a few more chapters/drabbles (drapters?), and will hopefully be posting a new creep-fest SanSan fic just in time for Halloween. Plus maybe a bit more Gendrya. Need more hands; need more brains; need more time._

Dunn brought them both food, water, took out the pot and brought another. Informed the King and Lady Stark, too, but no outrage brought them down here, left them to shout about their traitorosness and insanity through the cell door. Brienne and Jaime were left to their own devices, down in the quiet dark, while the world ceased to exist outside their walls, outside of their skin, outside of the sound of their breathing, and the humid trails of fingers in the grey mornings, afternoons, black evenings.

Jaime pressed close against her as she slept. Felt the arch of her strong back against his stomach, pressed his fingers to the familiar indent at her hip. Felt his sore cock start to harden again, as if he could last another round.

She stirred, pressed back against him. Asked him in a voice deep and rough with sleep: "Have I been out long?"

Jaime licked his lips. "May the Mother have mercy," he whispered dryly. She angled her hips, and he felt new wetness mingling with the dried remnants of their previous lovemaking. "Brienne," he said, "I have but only one hand."

"Are two necessary?"

"I believe I'd be best served by four. Are you not sore?"

"No," she replied simply. "I'm not sure I'm capable of feeling that sort of pain."

Jaime's fingers had found the parting of her lower lips, was slipping inside despite his reservations, even as his cock throbbed, not entirely pleasantly, against her hard backside.

"No cramping?" he asked gently, skimming the tips of his fingers back and forth, back and forth, as she made a whispering, whimpering sound deep in her throat. "No aching in your lower back?"

"No worse…" He found her nub, surprised that she was still enjoying this, wasn't growing blisters from the friction between her legs. She finished her broken response: "…than normal."

"So no labor. I'd say your reasoning might be flawed."

"I don't care," she replied.

Gods help him, neither did he.

Still.

There was something else in this room. Something lurking. Something that pushed the thought of fucking--the thought of Brienne's long, lean legs, the abundance of her fertile belly, soft, milky breasts--from his mind. Something cold and creeping.

Something like words, tripping from his tongue.

"I want you to go," he whispered, before he even knew what he was saying, before he knew where it was coming from. But now, as the words passed his tingling lips, he knew it was true. Brienne here in his bed was a dream…an odd one, admittedly, and a thought he had laughed at years ago, when he was wasn't intrigued...but it was one dream that wouldn't last. At some point the king would lose patience. At some point the Hound would come to drag him to a different cell, whispering sweet, rasping, threatening nothings into his ear. At some point the ache and cramp and blood would come, and so would the babes, severing their time together until Brienne could heal. And as much as she and Jaime might pretend that the world ceased to exist outside these walls, the wind through the window was growing bitter, and the clang of training in the yard more desperate, and the Stark house words were ever beginning to ring in his mind like sept bells: _Winter is coming_.

Well, winter was here, and so was Brienne. Alive.

For now.

"Go?" she said, a frown contorting the profile of her face--a face he'd once found unattractive, he reminded himself, though he wasn't sure why his mind was insisting on suddenly pointing out her flaws, the features he'd once mocked…it was almost as though his thoughts were trying to cushion a blow, trying to cut cleaner.

"To Tarth," he said. His fingers stilled at the crest between her legs, then flattened in the coarse golden curls. "With the children."

"To Tarth," she said flatly.

"It's an island."

"I'm aware."

"You'll be safe there."

"I'm not going to Tarth," she said.

"Don't you think it best?" Jaime asked, afraid to move his hand again, afraid she might fling it away. She was no longer pressed back against him, but stiff in his grasp, her skin going cold.

"Best for what? For running away with a tucked tail? I'm not a coward, Ser Jaime."

"'Ser?'" His reply was incredulous, and his words were coming faster. "And no one would think you a coward. They would think you a mother concerned for her children's welfare."

"I am not a mother," Brienne replied through her teeth. "I'm a fighter."

"You can be both."

"Not if I run," she said. Her thighs clenched together, as though she meant to trap his fingers there, so hard that that hand might be claimed as well.

"It wouldn't be running," he told her.

"If anyone is going to Tarth," she replied, "it's going to be you."

There was a strong silence, and the sound of a cry in the yard.

"I'm sorry," Jaime said through his teeth. "I think I've misheard you."

"I'm sending you south," Brienne replied, still staring at the opposite wall, as though she were afraid to meet his eye, to challenge him directly. "Before the Others come. Lady Sansa told me; they'll be sending the women and children to safety. They'll need an escort. She will listen if I beg your case."

"I'm not leaving you."

"You'd be with the children of the woman you wanted to marry. _Your_ children, you implied. They'll need one parent to watch over them."

"They'll have you."

"I'm needed here."

His voice was impatient. "And so am I."

"You're not listening." She found his hand, flung it from the apex of her thighs. He withdrew further, until the hot wall was at his back, and only cold distance between their bodies at his front. "I will not have you die," she commanded.

"Funny, that," he remarked. "I will not have you die, either."

"I'm staying here."

"If you do, so will I. And if we both succumb? What then?"

"We won't," she said, ever stubborn. "Because you'll be on Tarth."

"Wench," Jaime spat. "Stubborn mare." He sat up, reached for his tunic, as though he had the freedom to leave, as if he could storm off into the depths of the keep, soften his temper, wait for her to crawl back to him, and tell him she'd changed her mind.

But she was the only one with such freedom, as hampered as it might be. And she wasn't moving.

"You can please yourself," he told her, crossing his arms as he pushed himself against the wall. "If you have no need of me."

She didn't budge from her spot in his bed, her back still to him, but when she spoke, her voice was tight, and her hand was already poised between her legs, looked as though it were moving:

"Fine," she replied. "I will."


	30. Brienne & Renly, Brienne/Brienne

"Hush, child. What a mess you look."

It was one of the few times that Septa Roelle would admonish her for her looks, as, she supposed, it would be otherwise redundant. To be fair, she must have looked a mess (more so than usual, anyway), in her ill-fitting court gown that pulled across the shoulders because she was still growing--didn't seem to stop, wouldn't stop until she was twenty feet tall--her eyes streaming, the crust of snot coating her upper lip and trailing down her chin.

She hadn't stopped crying since the previous day. She'd known this was coming from the very beginning, had been counting down the days in her head, reminding herself that her friend--her only true friend--was leaving.

"It will not be forever, Lady Brienne," he had told her in private the day before, when they'd met to say their proper, more intimate goodbyes at the Scarlet Falls. It was turning colder, the leaves crisp and orange, red, yellow underfoot. They'd walked rather than ridden, drawing out their time. Not since the Kiss had Brienne felt so privileged to share his company.

"I'll trust you not to die, then, Lord Renly," Brienne had said, trying to smooth the raw edges of her voice.

"I have good friends with fast swords," Renly had replied. Brienne flattered herself for a moment, almost felt that little thrill of hope that he was talking about her, before realizing that (of course) he was referring to Ser Loras Tyrell.

He looked over, caught a glimpse of her nodding head, downcast eyes.

"Oh, Brienne," he said gently, "You will be far too busy fighting off suitors to fight off my enemies. You do not need charge of my head as well as your maidenhead." He snorted. "So to speak."

"You're mocking me."

"You know I would do no such thing." _Ser Loras would_ , Brienne thought, which made the thought of Renly sailing off to meet him even bitterer. 

"And if I find no husband?" Brienne said, jaw thrust forward, once more, for the millionth time, trying not to cry.

The falls were just ahead; they could hear the distant rush of water and the rustling of drying leaves, the howl of wind over the bowl.

Renly took her hand. Tugged at it, redirecting her attention from her feet to his face.

"Regardless of whether you marry or not," he said, his fingers making odd, light movements across her palm, "I suggest you do as soldiers do, Lady Brienne: learn how to please yourself."

Now, as Brienne stood on the dock at the harbor, her father before her, her septa at her side, and Renly out there, smoothly cast onto the shimmering sea, she felt her crusty face start to flush, red flooding her cheeks as she suddenly, unbidden, remembered what he had said.

"Is she well, Septa Roelle?" Brienne heard her father say, while there was the distant titter and sigh of his newest lady companion. "She looks as though she's overheating."

"She is perfectly robust, my lord. Over-emotional, is all. As girls tend at that age."

"Brienne is no usual girl," her father's companion said, a disembodied voice among the waves as Brienne's eyes stayed fixed on Renly's ship, growing smaller as it reached for the horizon.

"Do you want me to tell you what I know?" Renly had said, his hand still in hers, making those same odd circles in her skin. "What I've learned? I know it's not entirely the same, but I have heard things, and seen things in King's Landing, regardless of whether I wanted to or not. My brother--well, you know what he's like. What do you want to know that you don't know already?"

"She's quite well," Septa Roelle insisted. In the distance, sun glinted off a wave, shone directly at them, making them all squint, look away, except for Brienne. She stood there still, fixed on the distance, hands tight fists at her sides, her eyes once more tearing up for the brightness of it.

"Actually," Brienne said, for the first time in her life making herself sound weaker, flimsier than natural, "I am feeling quite flush. I think I best go to bed."

"Truly?" Septa Roelle said.

"Then go," her father's companion said, ever eager to be rid of her.

Septa Roelle sighed. "I will accompany you."

"No, no," Brienne said, suppressing her eagerness. "I know how you enjoy the sun when it's…like this. I'm capable of finding my own room. Thank you, Septa. Father. My lady."

"Brienne?" Septa Roelle said after her, but cared little to repeat herself, and Brienne was finally allowed to her room alone.

She locked the door behind her.

The shutters at the windows were next, the lamp lit.

"Turn the lights low," Renly had said. "Keep it quiet. Lock the doors, so you won't be afraid of anyone walking in. There might come a point you don't care anymore, but not the first time. Have you _truly_ not done this before?"

"No," Brienne had admitted, blushing brilliantly.

"You must wash down there. Poke about a little bit. Have you never felt some sort of pleasure--a tingle?"

Brienne was quiet, still blushing.

Renly smiled. " _Ah._ "

She ripped the seam at shoulder when shrugging the gown off, the laces still half-tied where she couldn't reach the back. She stretched herself, trying to work them loose, then finally tugged it down her waist, past her hips, to the floor.

The shift was next. A cool sea-draught slid past the shutters, the salty air slipping past her hot skin.

"I do have a certain admiration for the female form," Renly had told her. They had climbed down to the bottom of the pool, walked downstream until it was quieter, and peeled off their boots and stockings. Renly sat on a boulder, his feet in the shallows, while Brienne waded in to a patch of sunlight, the warm water wetting her to her knees.

"Of all various shapes and sizes," Renly added. He leaned back on his palms, stretched his wide shoulders, and tilted his lovely face to the sun. "And there are certain things the female body can do, of which men are just incapable…Isn't the water nice, Brienne? So warm. And wet."

Brienne jumped--there was shouting outside her shuttered window, the servants forgetting themselves, growing careless in thinking that her family was down at the harbor. Unseeing, unknowing she was there.

"Of course it's wet," Brienne had replied gruffly. She turned her back to him, lifted her own face to the spot of sunlight, felt it warm her skin.

"It should be," Renly said, in the sort of way he often did when he was actually talking about something else. "Beauty makes it wetter."

Brienne's legs were shaking as she lowered herself to her bed. Pried off her shoes. She hadn't worn stockings. She didn't own any that fit over the thigh.

"You have strong hands." Renly's eyes had been fixed on her suddenly, watching her from across the pool--she still had her back to him, but she could feel his gaze on her shoulders, hear it in the direction of his voice, pointed at her like an arrow, striking her in a way that sent strange shivers down her spine. "Women like that. Between their thighs, the surprise of gentle movements by strong fingers. Back and forth seems to be popular, though I’m more of an up-and-down man, myself. Circles might not go amiss."

"What are you talking about?" Brienne asked.

"Your clit, Brienne," Renly said plainly, and from the sound of his voice, Brienne thought that he might be blushing, too. "The nub at the crest of your lower lips. You know the one?"

"Yes," Brienne admitted. "I know it."

"Good," Renly replied curtly. "Grow to know it better."

It was too dark to see it properly with the windows closed. She could feel it, though, as she swept her thick index finger downwards, along the crease of her thigh, slid it to the center, at the seam of her parting. Opened her legs.

"Your hands are perfect," Renly had said. "Large, square, thick-fingered. Be cheered, my friend--those hands could be _anyone's_."

"Whose?" Brienne replied, frowning at him over her shoulder.

"I don't know," Renly said. He was smiling again, that handsome smile. "What do you like?"

Brienne liked men (as much as she was allowed to _like_ men) to be dark, and lean, and unlike herself. Confident and friendly and _good_. She didn't know if she liked them like Renly, or if Renly just happened to be of the sort she liked.

 _If I had a choice in this, you must know,_ he had told her, what felt like years ago, but with words that still felt hot, imprinted on her mind as she reclined in her chambers, the bed sinking beneath her weight, _it would undoubtedly be you_.

The blond curls at her apex were both coarse and smooth beneath her fingers. The callouses on her fingertips deadened the feeling slightly, made it easier to pretend as Renly had promised--that they weren't her fingers, but someone else's.

"What great figures are there, then?" Brienne had asked, the water growing higher, warm around her lower thighs. "At court and beyond? Who do the other ladies giggle and swoon over?"

"You do your sex a disservice, Brienne," Renly said, still smiling. "It can be best to be covert in affections, especially when the person attracting them is a Lannister."

"The Kingslayer?" Brienne had replied. "Jaime Lannister?"

"Have you seen him?" Renly asked.

Brienne shook her head.

"Someday," Renly had said, "you will, and then you'll understand."

Brienne's fingers stilled between her legs, brain burning with some strange disgust at having even thought that name-- _Kingslayer_. Dishonorable, a shame to his title, a mockery of an oath.

"Shall I describe him to you, Brienne?"

"No," Brienne had said forcefully, but Renly only laughed and carried on.

"Golden of hair, like his sister, who, I might add, is also a beauty, in a way that only women are. A very fine jaw. Square, with corners you can cut diamonds on. Shall I describe his eyes?"

"My lord--"

"Very bright. Very keen, and knowing, and the slightest bit angry. I have heard stories--now, I am not sure if they are true--"

"Renly--"

"And never a finer swordsman, in precision and speed, though don't tell Ser Loras I said so." His voice turned thoughtful. "He may be getting older, yes, but unlike so many things, he does seem to improve with age."

"He's a traitor."

"Careful," Renly had said. "Remember my family name, Brienne."

Shamed: "I am sorry, my lord."

"Don't be. But don't pretend that the anger of hearing his own name doesn't excite you, just the littlest bit? Someone so sharp, and so _dangerous_."

 _Dangerous_. Brienne's breaths were growing shallower, more uneven. A finger--was it hers? She could hardly think--dipped lower, slid between slick folds to the opening that had been relieved of its restrictions the week before.

Slipped inside. Curled, as if on instinct, as if it truly did belong to someone else.

Then there was a voice inside her head--no longer Renly's, but a voice she didn't know…one, she thought later, that was only a product of an oft-ignored imagination. Smooth, relaxed, nearly purring:

 _Oath-breaker,_ the voice said, whispered in her ear, between her own rapid breaths. _That is what you call me? What other oaths would you like to see broken, Brienne? Oh, it looks like one has already been broken for me._

"True, his dwarf brother is the wit, but of the kind that is very keen to make sure everyone knows it. There is a certain attraction to a more subtle mind, isn't there, Brienne? To secrets."

 _No one has to know_. In. Slide. Curl. Brienne's shoulder was tensing, her neck aching. Her knees were bent, alternately pressing together, out again, squeezing together hard at the upper thigh. _No one will see us. Or would you like them to?_

Her thumb crooked, shifted against her _clit_.

"Oh," Brienne heard herself breathe.

 _Yes_ , the voice groaned at the corner of her mind. _You pretend you have honor, but part of you wants to tell everyone to go off and fuck themselves, doesn't it? You want to watch the bricks of propriety crumble and the wall to fall. Don't deny it--everyone has that part of them. Everyone wants to take a hammer to it, chisel away at it, piece by piece. Renly is all well and good with his dancing and his kiss, but will he stop them laughing at you? You don't want someone who will pity you. You want someone who will make them_ afraid _of you._

"Oh gods," Brienne gasped.

 _Yes_.

"Oh gods," Brienne breathed again.

 _Yes_.

"Oh gods."

Finally, after an eternal moment of stillness, there was birdsong outside again. The sound of shouting in the courtyard, the stream of sunlight through the cracks in the shutters.

Brienne's slick hand fell from her thigh to the bedsheet.

"What in seven hells," Brienne whispered.

There was no reply.


	31. Brienne & Pod III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, s7e1, for making this fic basically canon!

"Nothing is amiss, my lady."

Brienne was at breakfast with Lady Sansa, clamping her thighs together beneath the table. She was picking at bits of fried rabbit and bread with her fork, not hungry.

Not feeling well.

In quite a bit of pain.

"You look pale," Sansa said. At Sansa's other side, the Hound poured her a glass of wine.

"It is winter," Brienne snapped, then softened. "Forgive me, my lady. I have not slept well."

"Are they coming?" Sansa asked, pushing Sandor's hand aside as he tried to move more rabbit onto her plate.

"No," Brienne said through her teeth, cutting off a hiss. She shoved a bit of mushroom in her mouth to hide it, then spit out in her napkin. "I assure you, my lady, that I will tell you when it's time."

A short while later, Clegane and Lady Sansa went for a walk on the ramparts.

A short while later, like a dog looking for a safe place to die, Brienne silently stole into the godswood, careful that no one had followed her.

She was almost crawling by the time she closed the gate behind her. The stone bench was frozen beneath her bare hands, and a thick layer of snow blanketed the branches and lumps of hard, cold ground. The gate had been frozen shut, the only footsteps were her own; the place would be deserted. No one would be there to hear her scream, or pant, or curse herself for her stupidity.

The ground was sloping blindly, great, tripping roots and branches thrusting out to bring her to the ground. She groaned as she staggered forward, gritting her teeth against the sudden, urging pain that made her fingers curl into claws.

It was the worst sort of pain. Woman's pain. Before, every cut, burn, ache, break had been a reward, a badge of battle, something that she earned and something that would make her stronger. The pain that accompanied her monthly courses had always been embarrassing, deep and sickening…something she hadn't asked for, and something she could do nothing about. It was always a weakness, always an embarrassment. When her moon blood first began, she used to burn the napkins in the fireplace, and cut herself to disguise the faint pink color of her bath.

Now, she'd been wearing proof of her femininity on her body for months. And in the godswood, she would either die a slave to her sex, or live to carry further proof in her arms.

Brienne gasped as the pain dimmed. The godswood came back to its blinding white, un-blurred reality. Pronged, clawed bird tracks glittered in the snow.

She staggered further, deeper, where the boughs hung heavy under the weight of winter, and where she could no longer see the walls of Winterfell. Where as far as she knew, she could be anywhere. Nowhere. There could be no one for miles and miles.

"M'lady," a voice said out of nowhere.

"Fuck, Pod!" Brienne screamed, falling backward against a hard, white-covered mound.

"You seem in pain," Pod said. He was standing in her circled footsteps, breath hanging about his face in a white cloud, his brow creased but his face otherwise blank. "I came to see if help was needed."

"Not from you," Brienne said.

"I can fetch the midwife, m'lady."

"No," Brienne gasped.

"Ser Jaime?"

"A man with one hand…and in chains. No."

"This is…" Pod stopped, looked behind him, where their footsteps disappeared into mist sent up by the springs. "Unwise, if I can say so, m'lady."

"I don't need anyone."

"I don't think you should be on your back."

"Go away, Pod."

"No, m'lady."

Brienne: through teeth: " _Now_."

Pod shivered.

"Come with me, m'lady," he said. He held out a hand, pale with cold. "Womanhood's nothing to be ashamed of."

"Leave me!"

" _No_. _"_ Pod tore at her sleeve, hauled her heavy weight to her feet. Caught her with surprising strength as she lurched forward. He flung her muscled arm around his shoulder, and steadied her with a hand on her hip.

"More care about you than Ser Jaime," Pod said, panting beneath her bulk. "And m'lady...many people would miss you if you died."

"Pod--" Brienne broke off.

"Let's go see the midwife," Pod said soothingly, though his voice, too, sounded hoarse with tears. "And I promise, m'lady…everything will be okay."


End file.
